Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Amid privacy concern, govt may curb collection of data by apps
Facebook's India policy head should step down, say civil rights groups
Redmi Note 9 to Go on Sale Today via Amazon, Mi.com in India
Google redesigns Google Finance and adds a "Watchlists" feature to help users group stocks and find relevant news, stats and earnings details (Abner Li/9to5Google)
Google redesigns Google Finance and adds a “Watchlists” feature to help users group stocks and find relevant news, stats and earnings details — Google Finance is getting a desktop and mobile redesign today that is focused on making it easier to “find data for stocks you're interested in …
Realme 7 to Go on Sale for the First Time in India Today
Samsung Galaxy M51 Launching in India Today: Expected Price, Specifications
Iron Ox, which uses AI-powered farming robots for its semi-autonomous greenhouse operations, has raised $20M Series B, bringing its total raise to $45M (Khari Johnson/VentureBeat)
Iron Ox, which uses AI-powered farming robots for its semi-autonomous greenhouse operations, has raised $20M Series B, bringing its total raise to $45M — Robotics farming company Iron Ox today announced the close of a $20 million funding round. The funding will be used …
Portland passes expansive city ban on facial recognition tech
The city council in Portland, Oregon passed legislation Wednesday that’s widely regarded as the most aggressive municipal ban on facial recognition technology so far.
Through a pair of ordinances, Portland will both prohibit city bureaus from using the controversial technology and stop private companies from employing it in public areas. Oakland, San Francisco and Boston have all banned their governments from using facial recognition tech, but Portland’s ban on corporate uses in public spaces breaks new ground.
City Council Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty linked concerns around high-tech law enforcement tools to ongoing protests in Portland, which have taken place for more than three months. Last month, the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed that it used a small aircraft to surveil crowds near the protest’s epicenter at the Multnomah County Justice Center in downtown Portland.
Hardesty called the decision to ban local law enforcement from employing facial recognition tech “especially important” for the moment Portland now finds itself in.
“No one should have something as private as their face photographed, stored, and sold to third parties for a profit,” Hardesty said. “No one should be unfairly thrust into the criminal justice system because the tech algorithm misidentified an innocent person.”
The ACLU also celebrated Wednesday’s vote as a historic digital privacy win.
“With today’s vote, the community made clear we hold the real power in this city,” ACLU of Oregon Interim Executive Director Jann Carson said. “We will not let Portland turn into a surveillance state where police and corporations alike can track us wherever we go.”
Portland’s dual bans on the public and private use of facial recognition may serve as a roadmap for other cities looking to carve out similar digital privacy policies — an outcome privacy advocates are hoping for.
“Now, cities across the country must look to Portland and pass bans of their own,” Fight for the Future’s Lia Holland said. “We have the momentum, and we have the will to beat back this dangerous and discriminatory technology.”
Groww, an investment app for millennials in India, raises $30M led by YC Continuity
Even as more than 150 million people are using digital payment apps each month in India, only about 20 million of them invest in mutual funds and stocks. A startup that is attempting to change that by courting millennials has just received a big backing.
Bangalore-headquartered Groww said on Thursday it had raised $30 million in its Series C financing round. YC Continuity, the growth-stage investment fund of Y Combinator, led the round, while existing investors Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital and Propel Ventures participated in it. The new rounds brings three-year-old startup Groww’s total raise-to-date to $59 million.
Groww allows users to invest in mutual funds, including systematic investment planning (SIP) and equity-linked savings. The app maintains a very simplified user interface to make it easier for its largely millennial customer base to comprehend the investment world. It offers every fund that is currently available in India.
In recent months, the startup has expanded its offerings to allow users to buy stocks of Indian firms and digital gold, said Lalit Keshre, co-founder and chief executive of Groww, in an interview with TechCrunch. Keshre and other three co-founders of Groww worked at Flipkart before launching their own startup.
Groww has amassed over 8 million registered users for its mutual fund offering, and over 200,000 users have bought stocks from the platform, said Keshre. The new fund will allow Groww to further expand its reach in the country and also introduce new products, he said.
One of those products is the ability to allow users to buy stocks of U.S.-listed firms and derivatives, he said. The startup is already testing this with select users, he said.
“We believe Groww is building the largest retail brokerage in India. At YC, we have known the founders since the company was just an idea and they are some of the best product people you will meet anywhere in the world. We are grateful to be partners with Groww as they build one of the largest retail financial platforms in the world,” said Anu Hariharan, partner at YC Continuity, in a statement.
More than 60% of Groww users come from smaller cities and towns of India and 60% of these have never made such investments before, said Keshre. The startup is conducting workshops in several small cities to educate people about the investment world. And that’s where the growth opportunities lies.
“India is seeing increased participation of retail investors in financial markets — with 2M new stock market investors added in the last quarter alone,” said Ashish Agrawal, Principal at Sequoia Capital India, in a statement.
Scores of startups such as Zerodha, INDWealth and Cube Wealth have emerged and expanded in India in recent years to offer wealth management platforms to the country’s growing internet population. Many established financial firms such as Paytm have also expanded their offerings to include investments in mutual funds. Amazon, which has aggressively expanded its financial services catalog in India in recent months, also sells digital gold in the country.
Lucid lets shoppers customize cars like a video game character
Lucid just launched its first production vehicle, and it looks impressive. But let’s talk about the new website, too. It features a remarkable buying experience that lets shoppers build a 3D car online and experience it in VR at a Lucid dealership.
Right now, minutes after its launch, the site is laggy at times. I expect it will improve.
Using the tool is just like building a character in a video game. Select a model, add some color and spin the model around to get another look. Don’t like how the black looks? Change it to red, and the image updates in place. Zoom in, zoom out and change the wheels. The image updates as you go.
Video games have had this feature for years. This isn’t a new concept. And some automakers have similar features that allow shoppers to change colors and trim pieces, but none I’ve seen have gone nearly as far as Lucid. Mercedes-Benz’s online shopping tool might be the closest, but it lacks the 3D range of view found on Lucid’s tool.
Once the customer customizes a vehicle to their liking, they can save the file to their Lucid profile and go to a Lucid showroom to experience it in VR. These showrooms — Lucid expects to build 20 in the United States — will have a display with Lucid seats and VR headsets. Lucid employees will load the customer’s saved vehicle into the VR system, and the shopper will be able to experience the car before it’s built.
This tool seems purpose-built for the COVID-19 age. It gives shoppers significantly more insight into a vehicle before going to the dealership. And then, when at the dealership, shoppers can experience the car without getting in a car.
For Lucid, this experience is dramatically more immersive than what Tesla offers shoppers.
Portland, Oregon unanimously adopted ordinances banning the use of facial recognition tech by city agencies, including the police, and by private businesses (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
Portland, Oregon unanimously adopted ordinances banning the use of facial recognition tech by city agencies, including the police, and by private businesses — The Portland, Oregon City Council today unanimously voted to adopt two of the strongest bans of facial recognition technologies …
In an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, 41 civil rights groups based in the US, UK, and New Zealand demand Ankhi Das be suspended pending audit of Facebook India (Russell Brandom/The Verge)
In an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, 41 civil rights groups based in the US, UK, and New Zealand demand Ankhi Das be suspended pending audit of Facebook India — Circumstances ‘show the potential for genocide,’ the groups said in an open letter to Zuckerberg
Eric Ries' Silicon Valley-based Long-Term Stock Exchange opens for trading, nine years after "The Lean Startup" author first proposed it (Biz Carson/Protocol)
Eric Ries' Silicon Valley-based Long-Term Stock Exchange opens for trading, nine years after “The Lean Startup” author first proposed it — Trading is starting on the Long-Term Stock Exchange. Next up? Attracting a listing. — A new stock exchange backed by Silicon Valley heavyweights …
Rhea Chakraborty's tee makes social media hyper, raises biz question
Inside Naver's 1784, a 36-level office tower in Seoul, which has ~4,500 employees working with 120 robots and serves as a testbed for various AI technologies (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg : Inside Naver's 1784, a 36-level office tower in Seoul, which has ~4,500 employees working with 120 robots a...
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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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Lorena O'Neil / Rolling Stone : A look at the years of warnings about AI from researchers, including several women of color, who say ...
