US travel reservations giant Sabre abandoned a $360M deal to acquire Florida-based Farelogix on Friday after a UK anti-trust watchdog prohibited it (Diane Bartz/Reuters)

Diane Bartz / Reuters:
US travel reservations giant Sabre abandoned a $360M deal to acquire Florida-based Farelogix on Friday after a UK anti-trust watchdog prohibited it  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. travel technology firm Sabre Corp (SABR.O) and software firm Farelogix Inc said on Friday that they would terminate …

The job cuts keep coming at WeWork

After this week's cuts, WeWork will terminate more jobs over the next month. The company also plans to permanently shutter its on-demand effort known as WeWork Now. https://ift.tt/2W03KGb https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Classplus raises $9M to grow its Shopify-like platform for teachers and coaching centers in India

An India-based startup that has built a Shopify-like platform for coaching centers to accept fees digitally from students, and deliver classes and study material online has received the nod — and capital — from a number of high-profile investors.

The business-to-business startup, called Classplus, said on Monday that it has raised $9 million in its Series A financing round led by RTP Global, a prolific investor in early stage startups. Existing investors Blume Ventures, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Spiral Ventures, and Strive also participated in the round, said the two-and-a-half-year-old startup.

As dozens of firms bet on hundreds of millions of students — and their parents — to embrace digital learning apps, Classplus, also backed by Times Internet, believes that tens of thousands of teachers and coaching centers that have gained reputation in their neighborhoods are here to stay.

“We are serving these hyperlocal tutoring centers that are present in nearly every nook and cranny in India. Anyone who was born in a middle-class family here has likely attended these tution classes,” said Mukul Rustagi, co-founder and chief executive of Classplus, in an interview with TechCrunch.

“These are typically small and medium setups that are run by teachers themselves. These teachers and coaching centers are very popular in their locality. They rarely do any marketing and students learn about them through word-of-mouth buzz,” he said.

Rustagi described Classplus as “Shopify for coaching centers.” Like Shopify, the service does run a marketplace that offers discoverability to these teachers or coaching centers. Instead, it offers a way for these teachers to leverage its tech platform to engage with customers (in this case, students).

Classplus has on-boarded more than 3,500 coaching centers on its platform, said Rustagi, more than 500 of which started using the service in the month of April after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government ordered to shut down schools and other public gatherings in a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease.

Coaching centers use Classplus to digitally communicate with students, deliver video classes and other study material, and accept payments. These coaching centers can engage with their students through Classplus’ mobile app and the website. “Joining the platform is as easy as signing up for a team collaboration app. The whole process takes less than 30 minutes,” said Rustagi.

“According to the Global Teacher Status Index by the Varkey foundation in 2018, India was among the top-10 in the world in respecting teachers, though was in the last-10 in paying them. Classplus is liquidating this imbalance by empowering tutors with full-stack mobile solutions, while maintaining and further improving the high reputation of tutors. We are happy to back the company with this important mission, and have Classplus as our first edutech bet in India,” said Kirill Kozhevnikov, a partner at RTP Global, in a statement.

The startup, which employs about 200 people, aims to have 10,000 coaching centers join its platform by the end of the year. It has a sales team and other members in about 70 cities in India currently. Classplus also plans to introduce additional features for coaching centers on its platform.

AarogyaSetu Mitr brings a doctor at your fingertips

The initiative will offer free online Covid-19 related consultations from the country's largest private telemedicine players https://ift.tt/2YuG7Hm https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

SC says virtual courts good during times of social distancing

Despite the resistance and the technological challenges, virtual courts could be game-changers too, since they save time, money and energy of litigants and lawyers https://ift.tt/2z2Du4O https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Experts see unhealthy angle in Aarogya Setu order

Tech lawyers say enforcement violates SC's 2017 privacy ruling and IT Act, which emphasises consent, proportionality & purpose limitation https://ift.tt/3daDuys https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This man assembled his own covid antibody tests for himself and his friends

In Portland, Oregon, earlier this spring, a programmer named Ian Hilgart-Martiszus pulled out a needle and inserted it into the arm of social worker Alicia Rowe as she squinted and looked away. He was testing for antibodies to the coronavirus. He’d gathered 40 friends and friends of friends, and six homeless men too.

As a former lab technician, Hilgart-Martiszus knew how to do it. Despite extensive debate over the accuracy of blood tests for coronavirus antibodies and how they should be used, by March anyone with a credit card and some savvy could order “research only” supplies online and begin testing.

“I am just doing it at home. This is total citizen science,” he says. Pretty much everyone who has had the sniffles or a fever in the last few months wants to know if was really covid-19.

Ian Hilgart-Martiszus draws blood from a volunteer to test for covid-19 antibodies.

MICHAEL MCNAMARA

On April 6, Hilgart-Martiszus posted results of what he dubbed the nation’s “first community serum testing” survey for covid-19, complete with figures and a description of how he did it. He’d beaten out big medical centers by weeks. His data indicated one positive case and three suspected ones.

The DIY effort put him, for a few days, into the forefront of the search for antibodies, blood proteins which form in response to covid-19 and are a telltale indication you’ve been infected. There are now dozens of surveys under way by blood banks and hospitals, and Quest Diagnostics has an online portal where people can try to make an appointment for a blood draw. A physician still has to approve the order.

Just one month ago, though, this type of information was hard to come by. Hilgart-Martiszus, annoyed by criticism of President Trump’s coronavirus response by what he calls the media “echo chamber,” figured that he would try to “fill the void” with actual data. He adds that he is skeptical of big government and “political officials comfortably receiving a salary and advocating to keep the economy closed.”

The mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, he slams as #trashyted.

Hilgart-Martiszus, whose day job is in real-estate planning for a sporting goods chain, first built a computer dashboard in March to predict hospitalizations in Oregon. He emailed a copy to his boss, who told him the company didn’t want to be involved.

By then, though, Hilgart-Martiszus was developing bigger plans. By March, scientific supply companies had begun advertising kits to probe human blood serum for antibodies to the distinctive “spike” protein on the virus. He paid $550 each to get some from the Chinese supplier GenScript.

Most research is carried out by universities or companies under a firm framework of rules. Two weeks after Hilgart-Martiszus posted his results, for instance, his old employer, Providence Health Care services, announced its own much larger serum study, drawing blood from 1,000 people in one day, according to news reports. While Hilgart-Martiszus’s study didn’t have the bells and whistles, or any kind of approval, he couldn’t resist reminding them who was first: “Looks like my old research institute will publish the second antibody study in Oregon. Can’t wait to see how their results compare.”

In Oregon drawing someone else’s blood is legal for anyone who knows how, says Charles “Derris” Hurley, a former pharmacist who says he fronted Hilgart-Martiszus $2,000 to purchase testing supplies. “I said, ‘Let’s go ahead and try this—if we learn something we learn something, and if we don’t we don’t,’” he says. “We are of the attitude that everyone should be tested.”

To take part in the project, Hurley drew blood from his wife, Jan Spitsbergen, a PhD microbiologists who tends zebrafish at Oregon State University, and she drew his. “She was a lot better at it,” he says.

Hilgart-Martiszus used the most accurate kind of antibody test, called an ELISA, which requires some equipment and know-how. He put the blood from his volunteers into special tubes, letting it clot for about 45 minutes. Next he spun it in a centrifuge for 10 minutes and used a pipette to suction off the serum, a clear liquid where the antibodies would be. Then he added dilution buffer and let it incubate with the chemicals he’d bought online on a plastic plate with 96 wells. The liquid would change color if antibodies were present.

To measure the readout from the wells, he needed a machine to scan the plate, which he managed to borrow from a nearby university. This particular test looks for IGG antibodies, a type that would be expected to appear about two weeks after infection.

In 40 tests, it was Hurley whose blood showed the strongest signal for antibodies to the virus—many times higher than anyone else’s. “If you look at Ian’s printout, I am the one that stands out like a sore thumb,” says Hurley.

It was the potential explanation for a mystery ailment Hurley suffered in mid-December. He’d come down with an unusual cold. He felt fatigued and had red eyes. Then his wife got sick in January and stayed in bed for two weeks. Plus, they’d had a Chinese exchange student living with them at the time. “We started talking more and more—‘We need to have some kind of test, something is wrong,’” he recalls.

Hurley believes he had covid-19, but if he did, that would mean the illness was circulating in the US a month earlier than is widely known (the first official American case was recorded in January near Seattle). As of May 2, the Oregon Health Authority says, there have been 2,579 cases and 104 deaths in the state, making it among those least affected.

Hurley says his positive result is not enough for him to resume his normal routine. “I follow social distancing,” he says. “I guess I want to have more verification and have some idea how long immunity lasts.”

Hilgart-Martiszus asked everyone to tell him if they’d been sick. That included Rowe, the social worker from Portland. “I had a cold in February, and I really hoped that I had gotten it out of the way, but no such luck.” She came up negative.

Demand for antibody tests remains high. After Hilgart-Martiszus posted his results to the web, “he was inundated with requests from all over the world,” says Spitsbergen. A hospital wanting to test its medical staff reached out to him. So did a fire department wanting to test 100 people.

With all the new attention, Hilgart-Martiszus says he’s trying to play by the rules and is not collecting any more blood at the moment. He’s instead working with Oregon State University to create a larger, more formalized study, with approval from an ethics board. He launched a crowdfunding campaign and a website where he’s developing plans to let anyone send in blood for testing.

“I told the first group, don’t take this as a clinical diagnosis—it’s not. It’s research,” he says. “I just pushed it out there.” Now he’s telling people he can’t test them right away, at least until he gets his paperwork in order. “It sucks to wait to help people,” he says, “but with all of the regulations, it’s too risky to test strangers.”

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Fitbit may launch 4G smartwatch for kids later this year: Report

It looks like Fitbit is planning to launch a new wearable that is aimed at kids. According to a report by Engadget, the company plans to launch a kids smartwatch with 4G connectivity later this year. It further adds that in order to do so, the company has acquired Hong Kong-based startup, Doki Technology that made a kids smartwatch with video calling functionality.

Engadget’s report further adds that a few weeks back, Doki had notified customers that its devices, namely the dokiWatch, dokiWatch S and dokiPal would be disconnected from July 1 onwards. However, it was noted that there was no mention of Fitbit in the mail.  

It should be noted that if Fitbit does make a wearable for kids, it will not be the first time it does so. The company already offers devices for children under its Ace range. However, they aren’t exactly smartwatches. The acquisition of Doki should augment that category as it the start-up not only features a self-built platform, but also offers top of the line features like safety tracking, video calling, and voice calling. The report notes that the company’s last smartwatch, the DokiPal, came with a ‘Doki SIM’ that offered unlimited data in over 509 countries for $9.99 a month. 

If Fitbit does release a 4G smartwatch for children, it should have the market pretty much all to itself. Almost all major brands that release wearables tend to focus on adults instead of children. So there might be a market for a wearable that parents can you to track and keep in touch with their kids. However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t attempts at making one. A few years ago, Alcatel launched the Movetime kids smartwatch that was said to offer a talk time up to two hours with charging time of nearly one hour. The smartwatch claimed to has a standby time of up to four days. The smartwatch is dustproof and supports calling function along with connectivity options like Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS. Alcatel Movetime sports a 96 x 64 pixels OLED display and weighs 40 grams.   

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US House Panel Calls on Amazon's Bezos to Testify on Third-Party Sellers

The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Friday called on Amazon.com Chief Executive and founder Jeff Bezos to testify to the panel about allegations that the online retailer uses data... https://ift.tt/35pOcyt

Google Travel Data Show Coronavirus Lockdown Fatigue in US, Australia

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Robots and Cameras: China's Sci-Fi Quarantine Watch

Robots delivering meals, ghostly figures in hazmat suits and cameras pointed at front doors: China's methods to enforce coronavirus quarantines have looked like a sci-fi dystopia for legions of... https://ift.tt/2zNyDVq

PUBG Mobile confirms v0180 update to feature Mad Miramar map, canted sight and more

Tencent has finally confirmed the new features that players can expect in the PUBG Mobile’s new v0.18.0 update. The tweet pretty much confirms what we’ve already known thanks to the Beta version of the game that got the new update a while back. The company has also comfy that the new updated version of Miramar will not be called Miramar 2.0, but rather ‘Mad Miramar’. To recall, the new update is scheduled to be available from May 7.

 

A glimpse at what's to come! Mad Miramar launches on May 7th with a slew of new features and gear! Make sure you're prepared now https://t.co/Npi5O5YFbr pic.twitter.com/m1EAaLnEsx

— PUBG MOBILE (@PUBGMOBILE) May 1, 2020

 

Mad Miramar

The new Mad Miramar map will now feature new locations like ruins as well as a new area with water. It will also come with the Golden Mirado, a special gold plated version of the Mirado. Only one instance of the vehicle will spawn on the map, so it’s a pretty rare commodity. 

New Win94 with 2.7x scope

The map will also come with the new Win94 weapons with a 2.7X scope attached. The standard version of the Win94 rifle could hardly equip any attachments. So having a permanent scope attachment should definitely improve the usability of the weapon. Besides this, the map will also come with vending machines that will dispense consumables like energy drink and painkillers. 

New results screen

Players will also see a new results screen that will offer better statistics and information. This will be quite useful for players to know how well a certain strategy performed as well as their effectiveness with certain weapons.

Canted scope

The weapons in the game are also updated to equip the new canted sights. These sights are attached to the side of a weapon and give players the option of having to scopes on their gun. The primary slot can be taken by a scope with higher magnification, while the side scope is pretty much a red dot scope for close-quarters battles. 

P90 weapon for Arena Mode

Arena mode players can look forward to a new SMG called the P90. The new weapon should offer players a large magazine capacity along with a high rate of fire. These attributes should make it a very viable weapon for CQB engagements.

Cheer Park

The developers have also confirmed the addition of a Cheer Park to the game. As per the Beta, the new cheer park will come with rides and arcade games where people will be able to try those out without worrying about being shot.

As mentioned before, the new features have already been added to the beta version. You can check out all the features here.

 

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Terra Quantum, a Switzerland-based startup developing algorithms for quantum computing, has raised a ~€10M round at a valuation of around €50M (Annie Musgrove/Tech.eu)

Annie Musgrove / Tech.eu:
Terra Quantum, a Switzerland-based startup developing algorithms for quantum computing, has raised a ~€10M round at a valuation of around €50M  —  Swiss quantum technology company Terra Quantum has raised about €10 million, with a company valuation at around €50 million.

How to use your old Android smartphone as security camera

In this DIY guide we are going to tell you how to use an old smartphone as a security camera. https://ift.tt/2SsXW5E

Many Silicon Valley startups are announcing job cuts and spending freezes to prove they can be disciplined about costs to would-be investors amid the pandemic (Miles Kruppa/Financial Times)

Miles Kruppa / Financial Times:
Many Silicon Valley startups are announcing job cuts and spending freezes to prove they can be disciplined about costs to would-be investors amid the pandemic  —  Balance of power shifts back to investors as founders look to bolster balance sheets  —  As one of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups …