Month: July 2018

If you’re an Apple customer living in China who didn’t already opt out of having your iCloud data stored locally, here’s a good reason to do so now. That information, the data belonging to China-based iCloud users which includes emails and text messages, is now being stored by a division of China Telecom, the state-owned telco.

The operator’s Tianyi cloud storage business unit has taken the reins for iCloud China, according to a WeChat post from China Telecom. Apple separately confirmed the change to TechCrunch.

Apple’s transition of the data from its own U.S.-based servers to local servers on Chinese soil has raised significant concern among observers who worry that the change will grant the Chinese government easier access to sensitive information. Before a switch announced earlier this year, all encryption keys for Chinese users were stored in the U.S. which meant authorities needed to go through the U.S. legal system to request access to information. Now the situation is based on Chinese courts and a gatekeeper that’s owned by the government.

Apple itself has said it was compelled to make the move in order to comply with Chinese authorities, and that hardly eases the mind.

It’s ironic that the U.S. government has pursued Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE on account of national security and suspected links to Chinese authorities, and yet one of America’s largest corporates is entrusting user data to a state-owned company in China.

The only plus for Apple users in China is that they can opt out of local data storage by selecting a country other than China for their iCloud account. Since it isn’t clear whether making that change today would see information migrated or deleted from the Chinese server, starting over with a new account is probably the best option at this point.

Hat tip @yuanfenyang

Google is continuing to test new strategies in China after the U.S. search giant released its first mini program for WeChat, the country’s hugely popular messaging app.

WeChat is used by hundreds of millions of Chinese people daily for services that stretch beyond chat to include mobile payments, bill paying, food delivery and more. Tencent, the company that operates WeChat, added mini programs last year and they effectively operate like apps that are attached to the service. That means that users bypass Google Play or Apple’s App Store and install them from WeChat.

Earlier this year, Tencent added support for games — “mini games” — and the Chinese firm recently said that over one million mini programs have been created to date. Engagement is high, with some 500 million WeChat users interacting with at least one each month.

WeChat has become the key distribution channel in China and that’s why Google is embracing it with its first mini program — 猜画小歌, a game that roughly translates to ‘Guess My Sketch.’ There’s no English announcement but the details can be found in this post on Google’s Chinese blog, which includes the QR code to scan to get the game.

The app is a take on games like Zynga’s Draw Something, which puts players into teams to guess what the other is drawing. Google, however, is adding a twist. Each player teams up with an AI and then battles against their friends and their AIs. You can find an English version of the game online here.

Google’s first WeChat mini program is a sketching game that uses AI

The main news here isn’t the game, of course, but that Google is embracing mini programs, which have been christened as a threat to the Google Play Store itself.

‘When in China… play by local rules’ and Google has taken that to heart this year.

The company recently introduced a Chinese version of its Files Go Android device management app which saw it join forces with four third-party app stores in China in order to gain distribution. This sketching game has lower ambitions but, clearly, it’ll be a learning experience for Google that might prompt it to introduce more significant apps or services via WeChat in the future.

Indeed, Google has been cozying up to Tencent lately after inking a patent deal with the Chinese internet giant, investing in its close ally JD.com and combining on investment deals together, including biotech startup XtalPi.

That’s one side of a new initiative to be more involved in China, where it has been absent since 2010 after redirecting its Chinese search service to Hong Kong in the face of government pressure. In other moves, it has opened an AI lab in Beijing and a more modest office in Shenzhen while it is bringing its startup demo day event to China for the first time with a Shanghai event in September.

Finally, in a touch of irony, Google’s embrace of WeChat’s ‘app store-killing’ mini programs platform comes just hours before the EU is expected to levy a multibillion-euro penalty onit for abusing its dominant position on mobile via Android.

There are roughly 45 million unpaid eldercare providers in the United States, according to the 2016 U.S. Census Bureau. It’s tough on these family caregivers, many of whom are working women who are also raising their own children.

There are alternatives. For example, there’s no shortage of agencies willing to place a rotating cast of caregivers into the homes of the elderly, though they can be prohibitively expensive for many families. There are also upstarts trying to address the challenge — and opportunity — that an aging American population presents. One startup, Honor, places full-time employees in the homes of seniors with an eye on maintaining a consistent experience for the seniors with whom they work. Another, HomeHero, partners with hospitals to connect home care providers to patients.

Now, another startup in the space, three-year-old, San Francisco-based Kindly Care, is taking more of a marketplace approach, pairing vetted caregivers with families who need them, then helping both sides manage their financial and tax arrangements by acting as their back-office provider.

The company, as with many similar companies, was born of the need of its founder and CEO, Igor Lebovic, a native of Croatia who’d moved to the U.S. to nab two aerospace engineering degrees, and never moved home, instead starting a company with a college co-founder.

They later sold their startup to About.com, then a property of The New York Times. Despite the happy outcome for Lebovic, however, he worried about his parents, thousands of miles away, as the realization set in that he might never again be as available to them as he was when they lived in close proximity.

“Like a lot of people who leave their parents behind, it’s one of those things that I’ve wondered about over time. We don’t have a lot of plans for our parents, and there’s this guilt.”

Whether the 12-person company eventually expands into Europe is a distant unknown, but Kindly Care seems to be resonating with caregivers in the U.S. According to Lebovic, more than 100,000 caregivers have registered with the platform in hopes of finding an assignment through it, and 20,000 have been fully vetted and are now available to contact through the platform and who can help with everything from memory care; to specialized nursing; to dressing, bathing and personal care; to transportation.

How it works: Based on a family’s specific needs, they scan interviews and videos of caregivers in their area, before settling on an individual and establishing an hourly wage that’s acceptable on both sides. Most families pay between $15 and $18 an hour, says Lebovic. After that, Kindly Care essentially sets up a payroll for the family that ensures that payments and tax withholdings are compliant based on the state of operation.

What Kindly Care gets in exchange is a commission based on the dollars spent on its platform. Families who pay for live-in help are essentially providing the company with 20 percent of the hourly wages they give their caregivers; for caregivers who don’t live with their clients, Kindly Care takes a 25 percent cut.

It may sound steep, but Lebovic argues that it has to do the heavy lifting required on the front end to ensure that caregivers are who they say they are, and that they operate in a way that’s compliant with local labor laws. That Kindly Care provides payroll and other back office functions presumably help many families, and caregivers, rationalize the cost, too.

Either way, Kindly Care remains more affordable than traditional live-in-care, Lebovic says, and it’s a far better alternative to posting an ad on Craigslist and hoping for the best. Investors appear to agree, too. Kindly Care just completed a $5.4 million Series A funding round led by Javelin Venture Partners, with participation from MHS Capital and Jackson Square Ventures . Altogether, the company has now raised $9.5 million.

Asked what Kindly Care will do with its fresh capital, Lebovic is clear. “Right now we’re geographically spread out across five states,” including California and Ohio. “Now, with the help of our new funding, we plan to expand to all 50.”

Google gave us a hardware blitzkrieg at CES. Among other things, the company announced a new smart display category, aimed at taking on the Echo Show through sheer, brute force. The new Show Mode Dock isn’t a direct response, but it’s a clever one.

Two years ago, Amazon introduced Alexa for the Fire tablet line. Last year, the feature went hands-free. In June, all of those additions finally paid off with the addition of Show Mode for the Fire HD 8 and 10, along with the dock, which effectively turns the tablets into an Echo Show. It’s a perfect bit of stream-crossing synergy for the company.

When I met with Amazon prior to release, I asked if the company was afraid of cannibalizing the Show. They seemed unconcerned. Not surprising, really. Hardware has always been secondary to its strategy. The more Alexa devices in the world, the better. That’s really the bottom line here.

For consumers, the form factor makes sense. You can pick up the 8- and 10-inch bundle for  $110 and $190, respectively, putting it considerably below the Show’s $230 MSRP (though Amazon sale prices do tend to fluctuate a fair bit). That cost is getting you not only a smart display, but a Fire tablet that can be unhooked and used in all of the standard tablet ways.

In fact, the more I talk about it, the less compelling the Show becomes. It was never a particularly attractive piece of hardware for one that’s meant to be displayed in your home at all times. In fact, it’s got a bit of an unintentional retro RadioShack vibe. It’s also unnecessarily big and bulky — that’s part of what made the much smaller Spot that much more appealing.

Given the new product category and some of the deep discounts it’s been getting in recent months, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a new Show on the way in the not so distant future. In the meantime, however, the device does have a few things going for it versus the tablet/dock combo.

Chief among them are better mics and speakers. Of course, you can always connect the tablet to a Bluetooth speaker (through the app, not over voice yet) to address the latter issue. But for now, if you’re looking for a screen-enabled device that can also double as a small entertainment hub, the Show is probably still a better bet.

It’s worth pointing out, too, that neither the Fire Tablet nor the dock are what anyone would classify as premium devices. Amazon’s efforts to compete on the high end of the tablet market evaporated years ago. The new Fires have decent screens, but otherwise mostly fit the bill of content delivery devices. It’s a strategy that has worked quite well for Amazon, as much of the rest of the tablet category has dried up.

There isn’t a lot to the dock itself. It’s a small bit of plastic with a kickstand that swivels out. There’s a plastic tablet case with two metal pads on the back that snap onto the dock with magnets. A small micro-USB module plugs into the tablet’s port, connecting the two, for data transfer and power, so it can charge while docked.

The key to the whole thing is the addition of Show Mode to the tablet, bringing the same UI you get on the smart display. You can enable it manually on the device by swiping down on the home menu (strangely, this doesn’t seem to be enabled through voice yet). The Mode does away with all of the details of the standard Fire OS, instead defaulting to a large, card-based system.

The Mode is also enabled when the tablet is docked. When you remove it, it reverts back to the standard tablet. Simple.

It all works as advertised. Though again, the speakers aren’t great, and it’s not as good at picking up sounds across the room. Although $40 and $55 for the 8- and 10-inch dock, respectively, is a bit steep, taken together, it’s ultimately a better deal than the Show — and either way, you’re getting a screen larger than the smart display’s 7-inch.

The Show Mode Dock/Fire Tablet combo is really just the all-around better deal. It also starts shipping next week — no word yet on when those Google displays are finally arriving. 

An undercover reporter with the UK’s Channel 4 visited a content moderation outsourcing firm in Dublin and came away rather discouraged at what they saw: queues of flagged content waiting, videos of kids fighting staying online, orders from above not to take action on underage users. It sounds bad, but the truth is there are pretty good reasons for most of it and in the end the report comes off as rather naive.

Not that it’s a bad thing for journalists to keep big companies (and their small contractors) honest, but the situations called out by Channel 4’s reporter seem to reflect a misunderstanding of the moderation process rather than problems with the process itself. I’m not a big Facebook fan, but in the matter of moderation I think they are sincere, if hugely unprepared.

The bullet points raised by the report are all addressed in a letter from Facebook to the filmmakers. The company points out that some content needs to be left up because abhorrent as it is, it isn’t in violation of the company’s stated standards and may be informative; underage users and content has some special requirements but in other ways can’t be assumed to be real; popular pages do need to exist on different terms than small ones, whether they’re radical partisans or celebrities (or both); hate speech is a delicate and complex matter that often needs to be reviewed multiple times; and so on.

The biggest problem doesn’t at all seem to be negligence by Facebook: there are reasons for everything, and as is often the case with moderation, those reasons are often unsatisfying but effective compromises. The problem is that the company has dragged its feet for years on taking responsibility for content and as such its moderation resources are simply overtaxed. The volume of content flagged by both automated processes and users is immense and Facebook hasn’t staffed up. Why do you think it’s outsourcing the work?

By the way, did you know that this is a horrible job?

Facebook in a blog post says that it is working on doubling its “safety and security” staff to 20,000, among which 6,500 will be on moderation duty. I’ve asked what the current number is, and whether that includes people at companies like this one (which has about 650 reviewers) and will update if I hear back.

Even with a staff of thousands the judgments that need to be made are often so subjective, and the volume of content so great, that there will always be backlogs and mistakes. It doesn’t mean anyone should be let off the hook, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate a systematic failure other than, perhaps, a lack of labor.

If people want Facebook to be effectively moderated they may need to accept that the process will be done by thousands of humans who imperfectly execute the task. Automated processes are useful but no replacement for the real thing. The result is a huge international group of moderators, overworked and cynical by profession, doing a messy and at times inadequate job of it.

Niantic — the company behind Pokémon GO — is back at it with another acquisition.

After acquiring Escher Reality back in February and Matrix Mill back in June, this morning the company announced it’s acquiring Seismic Games.

Seismic Games is probably best known for its work on Marvel: Strike Force, a mobile, turn-based RPG that has players build battle teams made up of all the big names from the Marvel comic universe.

Niantic’s two biggest games of the foreseeable future — Pokémon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite — both rely heavily on licensed IP. So acquiring a team that already has a wealth of experience with licensed IP — specifically, a team that can walk that fine line of building enough new content to keep the players happy without doing something that sets off the IP owners — makes sense.

No terms of the deal were disclosed.

Five months ago, Google decided to rein Nest in. After 4 years as a mostly independent division of the company, Nest was rolled into Google’s hardware team.

Today, more big changes: Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz is stepping down, according to a report by CNET. The reason? Employees at Nest had reportedly been pushing for a change, hoping for someone who had more leadership experience.

This news comes just a little over two years after Fawaz took over the role after the departure of co-founder Tony Fadell.

Fawaz is said to be staying on in an advisory role, with Nest pushing forward under Rishi Chandra, who’s been overseeing most of Google’s hardware efforts (Home, Chromecast, Google WiFi, etc) as VP of Home Products for over 3 years.

So what does all this mean for Nest? Further integrations between Nest’s hardware and Google’s other offerings are likely; in the past few months alone (since Google brought Nest back under its roof) Nest’s cameras have picked up support for Google’s voice-powered “Hey Google” Assistant, and its video doorbell can announce who’s at the door via Google Homes around your house.

As they confirmed to us back in February: the Nest brand itself will continue to live on at Google, and the company isn’t expecting any layoffs.

We’ve reached out to Google and Nest for more details, and will update accordingly if we hear back.

Twitter is pausing its work on overhauling its verification process, which provides a blue checkmark to public figures, in favor of election integrity, Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour tweeted today. That’s because, as we enter another election season, “updating our verification program isn’t a top priority for us right now (election integrity is),” he wrote on Twitter this afternoon.

Last November, Twitter paused its account verifications as it tried to figure out a way to address confusion around what it means to be verified. That decision came shortly after people criticized Twitter for having verified the account of Jason Keller, the person who organized the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Fast forward to today, and Twitter still verifies accounts “ad hoc when we think it serves the public conversation & is in line with our policy,” Beykpour wrote. “But this has led to frustration b/c our process remains opaque & inconsistent with our intented [sic] pause.”

While Twitter recognizes its job isn’t done, the company is not prioritizing the work at this time — at least for the next few weeks, he said. In an email addressed to Twitter’s health leadership team last week, Beykpour said his team simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to focus on verification “without coming at the cost of other priorities and distracting the team.”

The highest priority, Beykpour said, is election integrity. Specifically, Twitter’s team will be looking at the product “with a specific lens towards the upcoming elections and some of the ‘election integrity’ workstreams we’ve discussed.”

Once that’s done “after ~4 weeks,” he said, the product team will be in a better place to address verification.

Hackers can steal your phone number by reassigning it to a different SIM card, use it to reset your passwords, steal your Instagram and other accounts, and sell them for Bitcoin. As detailed in a harrowing Motherboard article today, Instagram accounts are especially vulnerable because the app only offers two-factor authentication through SMS that delivers a password reset or login code via text message.

But now Instagram has confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s building non-SMS two-factor authentication system that works with security apps like Google Authenticator or Duo. They generate a special code that you need to login that can’t be generated on a different phone in case your number is ported to a hacker’s SIM card.

Buried in the Instagram Android app’s APK code is a prototype of the upgraded 2FA feature, discovered by frequent TechCrunch tipster Jane Manchun Wong. Her work has led to confirmed TechCrunch scoops on Instagram Video Calling, Usage Insights, soundtracks for Stories, and more.

When presented with the screenshots, an Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch that yes, it is working on the non-SMS 2FA feature, saying “We’re continuing to improve the security of Instagram accounts, including strengthening 2-factor authentication.”

Instagram actually lacked any two-factor protection until 2016 when it already had 400 million users. In November 2015, I wrote a story titled “Seriously. Instagram needs two-factor authentication.” A friend and star Instagram stop-motion animation creator Rachel Ryle had been hacked, costing up a lucrative sponsorship deal. The company listened. Three months later, the app began rolling out basic SMS-based 2FA.

But since then, SIM porting has become a much more common problem. Hackers typically call a mobile carrier and use social engineering tactics to convince them they’re you, or bribe an employee to help, and then change your number to a SIM card they control. Whether they’re hoping to steal intimate photos, empty cryptocurrency wallets, or sell desirable social media handles that like @t or @Rainbow as Motherboard reported, there are plenty of incentives to try a SIM porting attack. This article outlines how you can take steps to protect your phone number.

Hopefully as knowledge of this hacking technique becomes more well-known, more apps will introduce non-SMS 2FA, mobile providers will make it tougher to port numbers, and users will take more steps to safeguard their accounts. As our identities and assets increasingly go digital, its pin codes and authenticator apps, not just deadbolts and home security systems, that must become a part of our everyday lives.

Bitcoin is moving up, and it’s taking 99 of its best friends along for the ride. In the last 24 hours, every one of the top 100 coins by market cap was in the green with 84 of them posting gains of over 5 percent. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was sitting at $7,310, up 14 percent in the last 7 days and up almost 10 percent in the last 24 hours.

CoinMarketCap Top 100

Bitcoin itself crossed the $7,000 mark for the first time in the last month, an indication but no sure sign that it might be shaking off a summer slump that’s seen prices plunge below $6,000 on more than one occasion. Bitcoin is quickly moving back toward early June norms around $7,500 though may meet resistance at $7,750. In March, Bitcoin dipped below the $10,000 mark and it’s been unable to mount a rally back above that level in the months since.

screenshot via CoinMarketCap

They may not last, but mid-July’s gains aren’t just a Bitcoin story. Out of the top 100 coins, 24 coins made double digit gains in the last 24 hours, including 0x and Zcash, two coins recently tapped by Coinbase as potential assets that the platform is “exploring.” Big Bitcoin jumps normally lead the charge for altcoin growth, though seeing its peers so uniformly follow suit isn’t something you see every time the most prominent coin’s price shoots up.

So why is the price up? Potentially all of none of these reasons:

• Yesterday, Coinbase shared the news that U.S. regulators will open the door for the exchange to list tokens that are categorizes as securities.
• Last week, Coinbase announced that it was exploring the addition of Cardano, Basic Attention Token, Stellar Lumens, Zcash and 0x.
• At Goldman Sachs, current COO David Solomon will move into the chief executive role. Solomon is regarded as a cryptocurrency-friendly choice for CEO.
• Asset manager BlackRock created a working group to examine blockchain and cryptocurrencies, though its CEO cautioned that he hasn’t observed “huge demand for cryptocurrencies.”
• Japan’s Line is launching a cryptocurrency exchange known as BitBox this month, though the token-to-token exchange won’t serve the US or Japan.

As with any price shift, headlines in one part of the world are just a single rumble among the many invisible international seismic signals sending coins up or down on a given day. As one reads the tea leaves, it’s worth remembering that correlation ≠ causation when it comes to big price moves. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the tea.

Disclosure: The author holds a very small position in some cryptocurrencies, mostly because it seemed like a fun idea back in 2013 and then she forgot about it. Regrettably, it is not enough for a Lambo.