Month: July 2018

The Trump Administration is planning a proposal that would seize control away from California regulators and prevent them from enforcing the state’s own emissions standards.

The planned proposal, revealed in a report by Bloomberg, aims to revise standards that are among the strictest in the country. The revision would also impact California’s mandate on electric vehicle sales in the state.

California is the only state allowed to regulate tailpipe emissions under the federal Clean Air Act thanks to a waiver it received in 2009 from the Environmental Protection Agency. Other states can follow the federal regulation or the stricter standards set by the California Air Resources Board, but they can’t set their own.

The EPA and the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are reportedly backing the proposal, each agency providing its own remedy to strip California of its authority. The EPA is expected to propose revoking the Clean Air Act waiver given to California. NHTSA is planning to argue that a 1975 law that enacted the first federal fuel efficiency standards prohibits the state from regulating tailpipe emissions.

California is hardly going to roll over on this proposal. The state is in the midst of hitting aggressive goals as part of a plan approved last year to cut emissions in the state by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030.

The proposal—presuming it sees the light of day—will be the first shot in what is expected to be a long battle in the U.S. courts. While an attack on California’s clean car mandate will cause some uncertainty,  it’s unlikely to derail the influx of electric vehicles poised for release over the next several years by an increasingly long list of automakers that includes Ford, VW, and Porsche.

Netgear home security spinoff Arlo just added another key hardware piece to its growing portfolio of connected devices. The Arlo Audio Doorbell is a kind of Ring/Nest (to which it bears a pretty striking resemblance) competitor that sends calls to the home owner’s smartphone every time someone buzzes the door. Visitors can either talk to the user or leave a voicemail message.

The product, which runs on two of AA batteries (getting around a year of use, according to the company) or can be wired directly into the house’s electrical system.

Interestingly, unlike much of the competition, Arlo didn’t build camera functionality directly into the doorbell. That’s likely, in part, a cost cutting measure. It also gives users some flexibility. If that do want that funtionality, they can pair it with one of the company’s numerous cameras.

It can also be paired with the new Smart Chime accessory, offering a more traditional doorbell experience. You can install as many of those as you want around your gigantic, cavernous home. Both new products arrive in the fall. No price has been announced, but the product should sell pretty briskly, given how successful the rest of the company’s line has proven, thus far. 

Musical.ly has begun redirecting users of its Live.ly app, which it decided to kill off last month, to a competing app called LiveMe. Existing Live.ly users are being pointed to LiveMe through an in-app message, it says. While it’s a fairly common industry practice for companies to direct users to similar apps or services when a product of theirs is being sunsetted, in this case, Musical.ly’s decision to close down Live.ly and send users to LiveMe was actually a contractually obligated part of Musical.ly’s nearly $1 billion acquisition by Chinese technology company Bytedance last year.

A clause in Bytedance’s agreement to acquire Musical.ly stated that, if the deal went through, Musical.ly would have to close Live.ly within six months, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

The agreement also said that Live.ly would have to point users to LiveMe for at least 30 days following its closure, we learned, when verifying the information.

The issue at hand was a competing investment – right around the time of the Musical.ly acquisition, Bytedance had also put $50 million into the live-streaming app LiveMe. Apparently, it didn’t want to operate two rival properties.

Clearly, this request was not a deal-breaker for Musical.ly – in fact, it’s integrating Live.ly’s feature set into its own app. That means it will still be something of a competitor to LiveMe, though now no longer a direct one. Musical.ly’s main app, after all, is not known today for its live streaming, but rather for lip syncing videos that are recorded and edited using the app’s included visual effects and editing tools.

In addition, Live.ly had not been able to attract the viewership numbers that Musical.ly had. The company said, when confirming Live.ly’s closure last month, the majority of live stream views were taking place in Musical.ly itself, not in its spinoff.

That said, Live.ly had a fair number of users. Though nowhere near as big as Musical.ly’s 200+ million registered users or 60 million actives, its live stream app had 26 million installs, around 70 percent in the U.S., according to Sensor Tower’s data.

But LiveMe is bigger – it has more than 60 million users and has paid out over $30 million to its broadcasters through its direct virtual gifting program, the company claims.

LiveMe is also not the only app operated by the company. Other LiveMe portfolio apps include the social short video app Cheez, and mobile gaming and esports live streaming app Fluxr. To date, it has raised a total of $110 million.

Live.ly isn’t only redirecting users to LiveMe, however. In its own announcement about the news today, it shows a screenshot that’s pointing Live.ly users to Twitter’s Periscope, for instance. The message also notes that the Live.ly domain name is for sale, and provides an email for sales inquiries.

Musical.ly hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.

Meet the Travel Backpack 45L. It’s Peak Design’s latest creation and the company just launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring it to life. This product marks the eighth Kickstarter campaign for Peak Design — all of which have been wildly successful.

Peak Design turned to Kickstarter in 2014 to launch the first generation of its Capture camera clip. Over 5,200 people pledged support to bring that product to life. Since then, Peak Design used Kickstarter to launch several camera straps and mounts and, most notably, the Everyday Backpack, Tote and Sling, which saw pledges from 26,000 people for over $6 million. Peak Design collected over $15 million in pledges through its seven previous Kickstarter campaigns and is now the most active crowdfunded company — miss you, Pebble.

Crowdfunding is deeply lodged into the Peak Design’s ethos, the company tells me. For one, Peak Design feels crowdfunding helps with the costs associated with bringing new products to market. The company offers pre-sale discounts through Kickstarter campaigns, which covers the costs of the product and lets the company use the extra to develop the next product. Second, Peak Design says it leverages the two-way communication Kickstarter provides to tweak product design, clean up messaging and ensure a high-level customer experience.

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The $299 Travel Backpack 45L is the company’s largest bag to date and is designed with a traveler in mind. The bag is constructed from 400D weather nylon and the inside is coated to provide additional water resistance. The bag has compression and expansion straps to let it grow or shrink as needed. A bevy of lockable zippers and access points seem to be positioned in a smart way around the bag.

TechCrunch loves Peak Design’s Everyday Backpack. Several of us use it as our everyday bag. Both sizes can handle a 15-inch MacBook Pro and they have the right mix of storage and access. I trust this new bag was designed with a similar level of competency.

Along with the backpack, Peak Design also released a series of packing cubes, each designed to address a different travel need. These are sold separately from the Travel Backpack and start at $29.95. There are six different types: standard packing cubes, a toiletry bag, an electronic bag, a camera bag, a shoe pouch, and a rain cover that’s made out of 200D rip-stop nylon.

What’s Peak Design Founder and CEO Peter Dering’s favorite part of the new bag?

“The entire back panel,” he says. “Not only does it beautifully conceal all the straps, it’s also got a beautiful grab handle that, for some reason I don’t understand, just makes you feel like a badass when you use it. It kind of feels like when Neo grabs that bag of guns in the Matrix, only my bag is full of drones, mirrorless cameras, and underwear. We’re all in agreement that any character Keanu Reeves plays is an aspirational character, right?”

I guess he’s right.

The $299 Travel Backpack 45L and packing cubes are available for pre-order on Kickstarter now and the company expects them to be in major retailers by the holiday season.

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Bag design with Peak Design

Alexa is finally getting an equalizer feature, letting users adjust EQ settings with commands like “Alexa, decrease the treble.” It’s nice feature that I’m honestly a bit surprised the company didn’t introduce a while back. After it rolls out over the next couple of days, you’ll be able to satisfyingly tell your Echo, “Alexa, turn up the bass.”

The full features are only coming to the U.S. for the time being, making it possible to adjust different bands between -6 db and 6 db on the standard Echo, the Dot, Plus, Show and Echo Spot.

The company is also offering up the feature for developers and has provided it to third-party speaker manufacturers, for use on products like the Polk Command Bar and Sonos Beam. That, at least, is part of the company’s push to get Alexa on as many non-Echo devices as possible, as it looks to compete with premium smart speakers like Apple’s HomePod and the Google Home Max.

Last year, Amazon was rumored to be working on a HomePod competitor of its own. That eventually semi-materialized with the release of the second-gen Echo. The device offered a more premium design and improved audio, but wasn’t the high-end speaker some were anticipating. At the very least, this new feature offers a bit more customization —  and, perhaps, lays the groundwork for a truly premium Echo offering.

Sonos today took the next step in its initial public offering price, setting a range for the shares it intends to sell that will help calibrate the final amount of money – and valuation — that it will have when it begins its trading debut.

This isn’t the final, final step in the IPO process as this is usually done to test the waters and figure out the exact appetite for the company’s shares when it goes public. Sonos is offering 5,555,555 (a wonderful palindrome of a number) shares, where it will raise as much as $105 million if it prices on the upper end of its range and sells them at $19 per share. The official range is between $17 and $19, but this can go up and down throughout the process — with a drop-off signaling a lack of interest or skepticism, and an increased range a sign of heavy demand. Companies will sometimes lowball their range, though we won’t find out for a little bit where everything lands.

Insiders are also selling 8,333,333 million shares in this initial public offering. Including that, the IPO could end up raising around $250 at the middle of that $17 to $19 range that it’s estimating including the shares sold by existing stockholders. The proceeds from those shares sold by stockholders aren’t going to end up in Sonos’ hands, so the company itself is only going to net around that $105 million at the top end of its range. There’s also an over-allotment, typically called a greenshoe, that consists of shares sold by Sonos and existing stockholders. That could add a total of $15 million and $22.5 million respectively at a price of $18 in the middle of that range.

The company is offering some preliminary estimates for its second quarter, saying it generated between $206.4 million and $208.4 million in revenue with a net loss of between $29 million and $27.1 million (this is probably because the final accounting isn’t finished up as we’re just about entering the front end for earnings season for major companies). The company said it sold between 880,000 and 890,000 products as an estimated range in the second quarter this year, up from 796,000 products in the second quarter last year.

Sonos is nicely positioned as a third-party option in an ecosystem that’s getting increasingly crowded by proprietary speakers from the larger companies that own voice assistants like the Echo, HomePod, and Google Home. But Sonos has been around for a considerable amount of time and has clearly built up a significant following to ensure that it could find itself operating as an independent public company. In its fiscal 2017 year, Sonos said it brought in nearly $1 billion in revenue, an increase of 10% year-over-year. The initial filing indicated that the company had sold a total of 19 million products in 6.9 million households, with customers listening to 70 hours of content each month.

This is basically the next step in the process as the company continues its march toward making its debut, and we’ll get more details soon enough as to whether or not investors are interested in a publicly-traded company that’s known for its speakers.

Synchronize your Apple watches and lock on to the fact that you have just three days — 72 hours — to save yourself up to $1,200 on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2018. Our biggest, boldest Disrupt takes place at Moscone Center West on September 5-7, and you’re running short on time to get the best possible price. Our early-bird pricing detonates at midnight PST on July 25, so stop procrastinating and go buy your pass to the best tech startup show going. Get your ticket today.

We can list all sorts of reasons for you to go, and believe us, we will. But consider what one of your peers — Luke Heron, an early-stage founder and CEO of TestCard.com — thinks about the Disrupt experience.

“I’m a serial proselytizer when it comes to TechCrunch events. If you’re a startup founder or an entrepreneur, attending Disrupt is a no-brainer.”

Heron also took advantage of CrunchMatch, our free, curated business match-making service that helps connect founders with investors who share similar business goals.

“We used the CrunchMatch platform to schedule a bunch of meetings on our second day of the show. We met with six or seven VCs and, by and large, they were very positive meetings.”

If you’re an investor specializing in early-stage startups, Disrupt SF 2018 is an essential event. You’ll see an incredible cohort of pre-Series A companies go head-to-head in Startup Battlefield, where they’ll vie for $100,000 in non-equity cash and life-changing investor love.

Here’s what early-stage investor Michael Kocan of Trend Discovery had to say about his Disrupt experience.

“I get the most value at the intersection of CrunchMatch and Startup Battlefield. If I see an interesting company present on stage, I use CrunchMatch to quickly schedule a meeting with them for later that day. It makes vetting deals extremely efficient.”

Founders, investors, marketers and job-seekers alike will find more than 1,200 startups exhibiting in Startup Alley. That’s prime real estate for discovering a new partner, finding a job, engaging in creative networking or possibly even finding a unicorn-in-the-rough. Regardless of your motives, the depth and breadth of technology and talent on display is worth your serious time and attention.

On top of all that, Disrupt SF 2018 offers more than 40 presentations from world-class speakers and rising stars, interactive workshops and Q&A Sessions, our Virtual Hackathon and the always-raucous TechCrunch After Party.

We’d love for you to join us at Disrupt San Francisco 2018 on September 5-7. And why not get the best price you can? July 25 will be here in a flash, so save some cash and buy your tickets now.

MyEtherWallet, the most popular crypto wallet service on the internet, is finally getting a mobile app as it bids to increase security for its users.

Today the company introduced MEW Connect, an iOS app that allows users to access their wallet through MyEtherWallet but without the need to type their private key. There are already solutions that allow them — such as hardware keys from Trezor and Ledger — but MEW Connect is offering the benefits for free.

The app is launching in the coming days as a limited iOS beta. Given that the website receives more than 600,000 visitors per day, demand for the beta is likely to be high. Those who aren’t successful this time around shouldn’t have too long to wait as a full launch is expected to come by the end of September. An Android version is also in the works and is expected to be released around the same time.

How does it work?

It’s really quite simple. The app uses a QR code scanner that replaces the need to enter a private key. Entering information like a private key on a website is something that people have always been warned against doing. Recent analysis suggests that more than $7 million has been stolen via phishing attacks on wallet services, but still people can be lazy or reluctant to buy a hardware wallet, so it’s a practice that continues to happen.

Now, using the MEW Connect app you simply scan a barcode on MyEtherWallet.com, which opens your wallet account using a peer-to-peer connection.

On the technical side, MyEtherWallet confirmed it is using Apple’s keychain services to encrypt the app — which it said retains data on-device — and pair it with the web-based peer. There are plans to utilize the Touch ID feature in iOS in the future, but the feature is currently absent.

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The app itself requires a master password to be set first — the app scores passwords and encourages stronger ones — and it provides a set of backup words, much like a device from Trezor or Ledger. The master password is designed to prevent unauthorized access, for example, if you lose your phone. The backup words, meanwhile — which should be written down on paper and stored carefully — are the key to getting access to your wallet in the event that you lose your phone.

That’s essentially it at this point. The app exists to remove the need to enter a private key. In testing, it worked fairly consistently across different browsers and computers I used, although there could be issues as with all alpha versions of software.

Payment potential

What’s particularly exciting, however, is what the app could become as and when it adds new features.

The main app screen includes a debit card style design and it’s easy to imagine that some form of payments, most obviously peer-to-peer, could be added to massively simplify the process of sending crypto.

But that’s not going to happen soon, according to MyEtherWallet founder Kosala Hemachandra, who told TechCrunch that he doesn’t want to rush introducing new features. Hemachandra said the intention is to move slowly to ensure users are comfortable with the app, but he did admit payments are on the roadmap.

“That’ll be the best use case for crypto we can implement in the near future,” he said in an interview. “If you want to go mainstream, that’ll be a huge advantage for the whole industry. First, we want people to get used to this MEW Connect concept, scanning a QR code and creating a P2P link.”

For now, the app does include a link that lets people buy crypto via a third party. That’s an approach MyEtherWallet has taken on its website service, and the affiliate money generated from that is enough to make the business profitable, cover payroll for its staff of 15 and generally keep the business sustainable.

Hemachandra said he knocks back interest from investors on a daily basis.

“I’m not really a fan of VCs,” he said candidly.

Removing private key risk

For the beta launch, Hemachandra said he’s hoping that lots of bugs are unearthed to improve the app experience.

“My hope is beta users will be developers who can go through our code. I really believe in open source and we don’t plan to hide anything,” he said.

Like MyEtherWallet.com, the plan is to publish the code for the MEW Connect iOS and Android apps online to allow scrutiny from the community. Given the reach of MyEtherWallet, this is definitely one project to keep a keen eye on.

Another is MyCrypto.com, a similar service whose founders include Hemachandra’s former business partner at MyEtherWallet, Taylor Monahan. The company recently removed private key access from its website for the same reasons to the launch of MEW Connect: user safety.

“Mass adoption of cryptocurrencies is unlikely in a world where a mis-click can cost you your life savings. Tragically, even when a user takes painstaking precautions in verifying that they are on the correct site before entering their private key, a compromise of the site itself can still result in a total loss of user funds,” MyCrypto.com CTO Daniel Ternyak explained in a blog post.

That two of the web’s largest wallet services are moving on from private keys is an important step for the crypto industry.

It’s one thing to run machine learning models in the cloud, where you have plenty of resources. On mobile devices, you’re dealing with very finite compute resources, so if you want to run your models directly on the devices, they have to be highly optimized. Add to that that Apple and Google are taking somewhat different approaches and use different frameworks and you can see why this is all a bit of a nightmare for mobile developers.

Boston-based Fritz, which is opening its service to all developers today, wants to make all of this far easier. It’s an end-to-end solution for adding machine learning models to mobile apps — and have them run natively on the device.

The company argues that as Apple and Google are both pushing their own frameworks, developers are left to work with what’s at best suboptimal tooling. Fritz then wants to build better tools to simplify life for developers.

“What we want the developers to do is build a model and then we take care of the rest,” the company’s CEO and co-founder Jameson Toole told me.

Fritz is agnostic as to the runtime that the models are actually using. Developers can bring their Core ML, TensorFlow Mobile and TensorFlow Lite models to Fritz and the SDK will monitor their performance and help developers push updated models to their apps without having to release a new version.

In addition, Fritz also offers a number of standard models for use cases like image labeling and object detection that the company has already optimized to work offline and at high enough frame rates to support live video.

Among the apps that starting using Fritz during its private beta are PlantVillage, which uses on-device machine learning to detect evidence of crop diseases and gives farmers in East Africa advice for how to treat them; MDAcne, for detecting cases of acne; and the more lighthearted InstaSaber, which turns a piece of rolled-up paper into a virtual lightsaber.

All of Fritz’s functionality is available for free. Over time, Toole told me, the team plans to add to the platform a number of premium services, including more collaboration tooling for teams and more automation features for managing and tweaking models. It’ll also launch more machine learning features, including style transfer and image segmentation.

In addition to its core service, Fritz also offers a number of tutorials and other resources for teaching developers about machine learning, as well as Alchemy, a tool for analyzing and benchmarking a custom model’s performance on mobile.

Toole also is open to going beyond smartphones and supporting other edge devices for IoT use cases, for example. Right now, the team is squarely focused on mobile, though.

Why do I write about tech? For James Ball, it’s because I want to write “soap-bubble light coverage” and “glossy coverage” “to counterbalance the ‘serious’ news of the day.” Ball, a former editor at The Guardian and the author of “Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World,” has a few choice words to say to reporters, columnists and analysts like me who cover the tech industry.

In a piece entitled “We need a new model for tech journalism,” Ball calls for nothing less than the dismantling of the current tech press, and its replacement by one far more critical of the corporate interests that dominate the industry.

Okay. But here’s the challenge: The whole idea of a coherent “tech press” seems to miss that technology has completely taken over the world. Want to cover Washington? Well, Alphabet is now the heaviest corporate spender on lobbying in DC. Want to cover foreign affairs? Well, U.S./China relations are squarely focused on issues of tech industrial policies, like China’s Made in China 2025 plan.

Every sector, every industry, heck, every decision is increasingly one in which technology either plays the prime role, or at least has major influence. Ball grasps that the work of a tech journalist is hard, writing that “Tech reporters are often expected to cover all facets of the industry.” Frankly, that was easier just a couple of years ago, before the iPhone and the global smartphone revolution made tech companies not just interesting, but powerful as well.

That to me is the burden of covering technology today. Tech now spans a spectrum from the proverbial two tinkerers in a garage to the most powerful corporations in the history of the planet. Most startup founders are broke, yet Jeff Bezos is worth $150 billion. Journalists need an incredible dynamic range to cover the range of these stories effectively.

Take startup coverage, which has always had a sort of effusive optimism that Ball clearly dislikes. Here’s the reality: startup life is awful. It’s stressful, emotionally draining and exhausting. And even after the founders make a total physical and mental commitment to a new product — a new way to see the world — the most common case is for literally nothing to happen. The average startup dies an anonymous death, without even a Medium “It’s been an incredible journey” post.

That’s not news. In fact, tech journalists could write “ambitious startup fails again!” stories pretty much every hour of the workweek and not run out of companies and founders to write about.

The reason people read about early-stage tech startups, indeed, why they want to read any news, is to peer into the exceptional and differentiate it from the mundane. They want to know why this startup succeeded when more than a thousand others fell by the wayside. Tens of thousands of high-growth startups are founded every year across the world, and yet, only a handful represents the complete economic value of the industry. That’s the story. I remain unabashed about covering success over failure (although learning from defeat has its uses).

Yet, our lenses need to change over time as these startups mature. It’s one thing to cover Airbnb back in 2008, and discuss this startup where a couple of founders are trying to help people attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver that year. But Airbnb is now a multi-billion dollar valued company, and deserves far more critical analysis than it did a decade ago. We saw this sort of narrative adaptation over time with Uber, and obviously with Theranos. But there are at least a dozen other companies that deserve fairly strict scrutiny of their actions on a daily basis, but often get limited attention.

To me, a renewed “tech press” needs to have both optimistic and pessimistic angles. It needs to cover very early startups with soft gloves while also knowing when to throw a punch as those startups mature and gain power.

Perhaps even more importantly, we need to start appreciating the complexity of our current environment. Alphabet can face a multi-billion dollar fine from the Europeans for antitrust, while also fighting a tooth-and-nail war with ISPs like Verizon and AT&T over net neutrality. These companies are so big, and touching so many facets of our lives, that there are no brushstrokes that can paint a simple abstraction of these companies. Some of their actions may be “good” or “bad,” but only deeper analysis is going to get us any purchase on the effects of these companies on our lives.

Ball and I completely agree that the coverage of technology increasingly requires specialization. No one can be informed about what is happening across the industry anymore, let alone cover it all. Indeed, I am not even sure a single human being can truly cover companies like Alphabet and Facebook. I am not sure their executives and boards know the complete extent of what is happening at their companies. We need more depth, more focus and more quality criticism if we are to build an effective press.

I am reminded a bit of Sara M. Watson’s work around “constructive tech criticism.” She wrote in her report, “Acknowledging the realities of society and culture, constructive criticism offers readers the tools and framings for thinking about their relationship to technology and their relationship to power.” To me, that’s a great mission statement for what coverage should do today. It requires us to renew our focus: to inform, to simplify and complicate as necessary, and to bring attention to the most salient issues of the day. That’s why I write, and why we should all be writing.