Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Nintendo Says 300,000 Accounts Breached After Hack
Honda Cyber-Attack Halts Plants in India, Brazil, Turkey
A look at TikTok vs. YouTube rivalry in India, amid geopolitical tensions between India and China that has brought anti-China sentiments to the forefront (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)
A look at TikTok vs. YouTube rivalry in India, amid geopolitical tensions between India and China that has brought anti-China sentiments to the forefront — Not many people in India had heard of CarryMinati until last month. Then, amid the country's novel coronavirus lockdown …
Techstars doubles down on space with a new Starburst cohort and European space program
Techstars has got the stars in its eyes, and space on the brain as it doubles down on investment programs that aim to enable the commercial space industry to boldly go where it has never gone before.
On the heels of SpaceX’s historic mission last weekend taking astronauts to the International Space Station, the space industry feels newly invigorated and its prospects loom large in the minds of early stage investors.
“I believe strongly that the commercial market is emerging,” said Matt Kozlov, the Managing Director of the Techstars Starburst Space program. “The flight last weekend was a very important milestone. We’ve had commercial flights for putting satellites into orbit for years. and I’ve got several startups launching satellites in the next year or two.”
For Kozlov and others, the combination of American government dollars funneling into commercial programs creates an incredible opportunity that investors can tap. “The fact that the American government in particular is increasingly relying on commercial companies to do what had typically been done by the military [and that] they are increasing the amount of money that they are funneling into startups to mature them is a clear indicator,” said Kozlov.
The Air Force in particular, through Small Business Innovation Research grants and early contracts to suppliers, has been a large benefactor for early stage space companies, said Kozlov. “NASA has been a little slower to working with startups,” he said. “They will work with very big companies like SpaceX because they have a lower risk tolerance. But I am seeing that start to change. And I think our program is part of that initial change…We’re seeing NASA embrace external contracts for innovation.”
Just one year after launching its initial cohort, the Techstars Starburst portfolio had managed to notch a few successes including a $3 million round for OrbitFab; a boost in profile for Morpheus Space and its modular, scalable satellite propulsion technology; and an imminent satellite launch for Pixxel.
Building on that success Techstars has actually developed a second space accelerator program for partners across the pond.
The Techstars Allied Space Accelerator is a virtual program formed in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force, the Netherlands Ministry of Defense, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense and the Norwegian Space Agency.
According to a statement from Techstars the virtual program also focuses on the next generation of space technologies, with companies working on geospatial analytics, satellite servicing, space situational awareness, resilient communications, machine learning and other verticals.
It’s a compliment to the existing Starburst program, whose latest cohort includes:
- Bifrost: a company that develops a technology to build machine learning applications ten times faster by allowing machine developers to generate labeled datasets.
- Holos: an extended reality software development platform to easily building immersive experiences
- Infinite Composites Technologies: a manufacturer of composite pressure vessels and structures
- Lux Semiconductors: a developer of system-on-foil flexible electronic circuits
- Natural Intelligence Systems: a developer of machine learning systems that streamlines data preparation
- Prewitt Ridge: a provider of engineering augmentation software to help engineers design complex systems
- SATIM Inc: a provider of risk analysis software and services related to critical infrastructure
- Urban Sky: a manufacturer of a proprietary remote sensing vehicle called the Microballon
- vRotors: providing telerobotics technology for the masses, the company enables the remote control of any partner company’s robot or drone from a personal computer or headset
- WeavAir: has developed an technology to monitor air contamination, air quality and mechanical system failure
Techstars Allied Space Accelerator:
- AlphaBBL: a monitoring and analytics tool for oil storage facilities that captures data taken from space and creates predictive tools to interpret that data.
- AnsuR: this company develops what Techstars describes as high-precision, mission-critical visual communication distribution technologies
- Arway: a global location platform that uses extended reality
- Cognitive Space: a company providing autonomous satellite operations technologies
- Ellipsis Earth Intelligence: is providing optimized access to geo-intelligence
- Hosta Labs: uses machine learning to provide structural assessment of physical spaces
- Kayhan Space: the developer of a hosted flight dynamics and mission analysis platform for space situational awareness.
- SaltyCloud, PBC: the company makes automation technologies for cybersecurity operations
- Space Products and Innovation GmbH: a developer of plug and play technologies to streamline satellite manufacturing
- Vake: a provider of machine learning for satellite imagery to identify all seafaring vessels
Sources: Amazon aims to test the bulk of its US workers for COVID-19 every two weeks; company confirms launching a pilot program at some fulfillment centers (CNBC)
Sources: Amazon aims to test the bulk of its US workers for COVID-19 every two weeks; company confirms launching a pilot program at some fulfillment centers — - Amazon aims to test the bulk of its workers for Covid-19 every two weeks. — To this end, the company is setting …
Boom.tv, which has built a live-streaming service that makes it easier to watch and create amateur esports events, raises $10M Series A (Samson Amore/The Wrap)
Boom.tv, which has built a live-streaming service that makes it easier to watch and create amateur esports events, raises $10M Series A — Boom.tv will use the funds to expand its marketing and development budgets, CEO Sumit Gupta says — Esports production platform and competition …
New Intel chip flaws disclosed: one can leak secure enclave data and the second allows cross core info leakage; both have patches that partially fix the issues (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)
New Intel chip flaws disclosed: one can leak secure enclave data and the second allows cross core info leakage; both have patches that partially fix the issues — Intel's speculative execution flaws go deeper and are harder to fix than we thought. — For the past two years, modern CPUs …
TSMC says it is has begun the installation of 3nm process fabrication lines and is on track to begin volume chip production in H2 2022 (DigiTimes)
TSMC says it is has begun the installation of 3nm process fabrication lines and is on track to begin volume chip production in H2 2022 — TSMC is fast advancing its manufacturing processes. The foundry maintains that its 3nm fab project remains on schedule, with the technology to be ready …
Virus lockdown hangover lingers in Etail section
Redmi Note 9 Pro Max to Go on Sale Today at 12 Noon via Amazon, Mi.com
Honda halts production at some plants after being hit by a cyberattack
Enlarge (credit: Yonkers Honda / Flickr)
Honda halted manufacturing at some of its plants around the world on Tuesday after being hit by a cyberattack that’s widely reported to be ransomware.
“Honda has experienced a cyberattack that has affected production operations at some US plants,” the automaker told Ars. “However, there is no current evidence of loss of personally identifiable information. We have resumed production in most plants and are currently working toward the return to production of our auto and engine plants in Ohio.”
Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday evening that production was suspended at car factories in Ohio and Turkey as well as at motorcycle plants in India and South America. The company, according to Bloomberg, was working to fix systems. The news outlet also said that Japanese operations weren’t affected and that other Honda plants in the United States have already resumed manufacturing.
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Transparent face mask startup inhales $1M seed round
A Swiss startup called HMCARE, spun out of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, has raised a million Swiss Francs (equivalent to about $105 million) to commercialize its transparent and relatively eco-friendly surgical masks.
The founders were inspired by healthcare workers in the 2015 Ebola outbreak and at children’s hospitals around the world working closely with patients but unable to show their faces. Likewise parents and relatives of immunocompromised people who must make a human connection with two-thirds of their face covered.
There were technically transparent masks available, but they were just regular masks with a plastic window in them, which can fog up and isn’t breathable. Thierry Pelet, now CEO of the company, approached his EPFL colleagues with a prototype of a transparent mask material meeting the rigorous demands of a medical environment. It must permit air through but not viruses or bacteria, and so on.
The team worked with Swiss materials center Empa to create a new type of textile. Using biomass-derived transparent fibers placed 100 nanometers apart to form sheets and then triple-layered, they made a flexible, breathable material that’s also nearly transparent — a bit like lightly frosted glass. They call it the HelloMask.
The material can be made in bulk and formed into mask shapes just like normal cloth, but there is the matter of spinning up manufacturing for it. Fortunately, the world is desperate for masks, and the idea of a transparent one was clearly catnip for investors. HMCARE easily raised a million-franc seed round, the R&D work having been done using nonprofit donations and grants.
While the HelloMasks could launch as early as the start of 2021, they’ll be primarily for the medical community, though public availability is certainly a possibility.
IBM Cloud is suffering a major outage, with some reports of servers slowly coming back online after nearly three hours, impacting customers including Techmeme (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)
IBM Cloud is suffering a major outage, with some reports of servers slowly coming back online after nearly three hours, impacting customers including Techmeme — The IBM Cloud is currently suffering a major outage, and with that, multiple services that are hosted on the platform are also down …
Newly released TikTok clone Zynn was removed from the Play Store after reports indicate it was filled with multiple stolen videos from other platforms (Louise Matsakis/Wired)
Newly released TikTok clone Zynn was removed from the Play Store after reports indicate it was filled with multiple stolen videos from other platforms — Multiple influencers told WIRED that their videos had been copied from other platforms and reposted to Zynn without permission.
MediaTek says it has started to use Intel Foundry's advanced chip packaging in addition to TSMC's, as the mobile chip designer bets on AI demand for growth (Cheng Ting-Fang/Nikkei Asia)
Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia : MediaTek says it has started to use Intel Foundry's advanced chip packaging in addition to TSMC's...
