Month: August 2018

Google today is expanding YouTube’s set of “digital wellbeing” tools, with an added feature that will calculate how much you’re watching videos. The idea is that this will allow users to take better control over their viewing behavior and place limits on their time spent on YouTube by way of other app features that remind you to take a break. The “Time Watched” feature, rolling out today, will inform YouTube users how much they’ve watched today, yesterday, and over the past 7 days, says YouTube.

The company, along with Apple and Facebook, have more recently begun to take responsibility for the addictive nature of their devices and services which were designed to exploit vulnerabilities in human psychology, and are now facing the unintended consequences of those decisions.

At Google, the company is now addressing digital wellbeing across its products, including Android, Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube and elsewhere.

At its Google I/O developer conference earlier this year, it introduced a series of controls for YouTube viewers, including reminders to pause your viewing (“Take a Break”) and those that would disable notification sounds for periods of time, and allow you to receive notifications as a digest.

At the time, Google said it was “soon” preparing to roll out a “Time Watched” profile that will appear in the Account menu – that’s what’s new as of today.

When the feature arrives, you can visit your profile in the account menu to see your stats, including time watched over various time frames, as well as your Daily Average. This information is calculated based on your YouTube watch history, the company says.

That means if you have deleted videos from your history or watched in Incognito Mode, that viewing won’t be counted. Additionally, if you pause your history, you’ll also be unable to track your stats.

It was initially unclear if YouTube TV watch history is being counted. A screenshot shared by Google today says it’s not, nor is YouTube Music. However, the answer on the YouTube Help support site Google linked to in a blog post says it is. We’ve asked Google to clarify which is correct and will update when the company responds. Google says it is not counted, which is good – YouTube TV is basically just like television, which is associated with longer programming blocks, and longer time spent viewing, in many cases.

The new feature is rolling out starting today, YouTube says.

Google today is expanding YouTube’s set of “digital wellbeing” tools, with an added feature that will calculate how much you’re watching videos. The idea is that this will allow users to take better control over their viewing behavior and place limits on their time spent on YouTube by way of other app features that remind you to take a break. The “Time Watched” feature, rolling out today, will inform YouTube users how much they’ve watched today, yesterday, and over the past 7 days, says YouTube.

The company, along with Apple and Facebook, have more recently begun to take responsibility for the addictive nature of their devices and services which were designed to exploit vulnerabilities in human psychology, and are now facing the unintended consequences of those decisions.

At Google, the company is now addressing digital wellbeing across its products, including Android, Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube and elsewhere.

At its Google I/O developer conference earlier this year, it introduced a series of controls for YouTube viewers, including reminders to pause your viewing (“Take a Break”) and those that would disable notification sounds for periods of time, and allow you to receive notifications as a digest.

At the time, Google said it was “soon” preparing to roll out a “Time Watched” profile that will appear in the Account menu – that’s what’s new as of today.

When the feature arrives, you can visit your profile in the account menu to see your stats, including time watched over various time frames, as well as your Daily Average. This information is calculated based on your YouTube watch history, the company says.

That means if you have deleted videos from your history or watched in Incognito Mode, that viewing won’t be counted. Additionally, if you pause your history, you’ll also be unable to track your stats.

It was initially unclear if YouTube TV watch history is being counted. A screenshot shared by Google today says it’s not, nor is YouTube Music. However, the answer on the YouTube Help support site Google linked to in a blog post says it is. We’ve asked Google to clarify which is correct and will update when the company responds. Google says it is not counted, which is good – YouTube TV is basically just like television, which is associated with longer programming blocks, and longer time spent viewing, in many cases.

The new feature is rolling out starting today, YouTube says.

Abbyy, a maker of optical character recognition software, has exposed a trove of sensitive customer documents after a database server was left online without a password.

The exposed server was found by former Kromtech security researcher Bob Diachenko, who now works independently. In a blog post shared prior to publication, he said one of the company’s MongoDB servers was mistakenly configured for public access. He told TechCrunch that the server contained 203,896 scanned files, including contracts, non-disclosure agreements, memos and other highly sensitive documents dating back to 2012.

The data also included corporate usernames and scrambled passwords.

The Moscow-based company specializes in document capture products and services, including converting physical documents to searchable and indexable digital content across a range of languages.

The company claims to serve thousands of organizations and over 50 million users.

After a private disclosure earlier this month, the server was pulled offline. Abbyy confirmed the exposure in an email Monday but did not say why the storage server was left open for anyone to access.

“The incident in question concerns one rather than several customers and files bearing commercial information,” said spokesperson Anna Ivanova-Galitsina. “The customer has been duly notified and we are cooperating on corrective measures.”

“As soon as [Diachenko] notified us we locked external access to the documents. We have made all the notifications that are legally required, have conducted a full corrective security review of our infrastructure, processes and procedures,” the spokesperson said. The company said that the exposure was “a one-off incident and doesn’t compromise any other services, products or clients of the company,” but noted that a “further analysis is ongoing.”

When pressed, the company confirm the name of the customer affected. Abbyy has dozens of major global customers, including Volkswagen, PepsiCo, McDonalds, and the Australian Taxation Office.

Abbyy would not say if anyone else accessed the database.

It’s the latest in a string of exposed MongoDB databases found by Diachenko in recent months, including a popular virtual keyboard app with 31 million users and more recently an app for connecting babysitters.

MongoDB is widely used across the enterprise for scalability and versatility, but many older versions of the database software still in use today operate without a password by default. Last year, hackers took advantage of thousands of exposes servers by downloading and deleting their contents — effectively holding them for ransom.

Amazon this morning announced the opening of its second Amazon Go convenience store, which is again located in the retailer’s hometown of Seattle. The new store is 1,450 square feet in size – a bit smaller than the first store’s 1800 square feet – and will be located at 5th and Marion in Seattle. It will feature a range of ready-to-eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack options, as well as Amazon’s Meal Kits.

The food options will be made by Amazon chefs and various local kitchens and bakeries, the retailer notes. For example, it will stock quick snacks like chips, bars, candy and locally made chocolates, along with lunch options like salads, sandwiches, and wraps. For dinner, the Amazon Meal Kits offer all the ingredients for a home-cooked meal for two that takes about 30 minutes to prepare.

This is a smaller selection than available at the flagship Amazon Go store, which also stocked beer and wine and various grocery items, including Whole Foods’ 365 Everyday Value brand products.

Also because of the store’s smaller size, there’s not a kitchen on the premises. Instead, the fresh food will come from an Amazon kitchen elsewhere in Seattle, according to a report from The Seattle Times, which toured the space ahead of its opening.

The store will be open only on weekdays, from 7 AM to 7 PM, Amazon says, as it’s meant to cater more to the office worker crowd.

Earlier reports had said Amazon was planning to open as many as six Amazon Go locations throughout 2018. But the company has not publicly discussed its roadmap. In May, however, Amazon job postings pointed to store plans for Chicago and San Francisco. Amazon would only confirm plans were in the works, not when it would launch in those markets. It’s been expected that the first handful of Go stores would arrive in Seattle and L.A.

This second location works the same as the first, from a technology perspective.

The Go store’s system includes a number of cameras mounted overhead that track shoppers’ movements from every angle, weight sensors on the shelves, and the Amazon Go mobile app, which is swiped on the way in to automatically charge shoppers for whatever they take.

The stores are a feat, in terms of computer vision and machine learning, and have spurred a market of competitors who want to bring similar technology to Amazon’s rivals and other retailers. But some question the necessity of replacing human store staff with camera arrays and other technology only to save shoppers only a minute or so of time at checkout.

Eventually, the larger vision here is reducing headcount – despite any claims to the contrary about shifting workers to “customer service” and “stocking.”

Combined with other advances that automate out the need for as many employees in jobs like fast food, quick serve restaurants, coffee houses, and apparel shops, one has to wonder if it’s responsible to develop the technology that eliminates jobs, before there’s a plan to train workers in the jobs of the future – which could be those involving maintenance on the machines that replaced them, optical engineers, A.I. and software developers, and other tech work.

In the long-term, workers may gain access to better, higher-paying jobs as a result of these changes, but the immediate result is short-term layoffs, as those who have jobs in convenience stores aren’t trained to be software engineers.

Amazon isn’t currently discussing its opening dates for future Go stores.

Privacy and security continue to be a top-line issue in our world today. This puts facial recognition in a bit of a grey area, as it could offer incredible benefits to our security and open up vulnerabilities when it comes to our privacy.

Luckily, Kairos CEO and cofounder Brian Brackeen will be joining us at Disrupt to chat about all this and more.

The idea for Kairos came when Brackeen was working on HR time-clocking systems at Apple. People were cheating the system, which spurred Brackeen to implement facial recognition. Long before Apple ever introduced FaceID, Brackeen knew that this type of verification would have big implications on the broader ecosystem.

But those implications can be just as negative as they can positive, a fact that Brackeen is keenly aware of.

“Facial recognition-powered government surveillance is an extraordinary invasion of the privacy of all citizens — and a slippery slope to losing control of our identities altogether,” Brackeen wrote in a TechCrunch post in June. That’s why Brackeen has decided that Kairos facial recognition technology won’t be used by any government entities or law enforcement.

However, Kairos has been working to help banks and other enterprise corporations with security and user verification, which could end up being a game-changer in the growing world of crypto.

Kairos also sees an opportunity to help brands and marketers understand the sentiment of users viewing and interacting with their content, which is why the company recently acquired EmotionReader.

But the promise of facial recognition is dependent on near-perfect accuracy.

At Disrupt SF, we’ll put Kairos to the test. Brackeen will hop on stage and demo the tech in a way that’s never been done before. We’ll also have the chance to ask him about the larger implications of facial recognition and what it means to build a business without wavering on your principles.

Disrupt SF will take place in San Francisco’s Moscone Center West from September 5 to 7. The full agenda is here, and you can still buy tickets right here.

A new report from Bloomberg confirms previous rumors and lines up with Ming-Chi Kuo’s original report from November 2017. It sounds likely that Apple is going to introduce three new phones in September — an updated iPhone X, a bigger phone and a successor to the iPhone 8 with the iPhone X design.

The updated iPhone X could be considered as an “S upgrade” with a better system-on-a-chip and better cameras. The phone itself could look exactly the same as the iPhone X you can buy today. But you can expect faster performance thanks to an updated A12 chip designed by Apple and manufactured by TSMC.

The bigger device could feature a gigantic 6.5-inch display. It should have exactly the same features as the updated iPhone X — stainless steel edges, two cameras on the back, an OLED display, etc. This model could have two SIM slots in some countries to make it easier to roam in other regions and countries.

More interestingly, Apple wants to replace the iPhone 8 with a device inspired by the iPhone X. It could cost around as much as the iPhone 8 today, but it should be a big upgrade for those who are focused on the entry-level model.

Of course, there will be some compromises. For instance, Apple will replace the stainless steel edges with aluminum edges. There should be a single camera on the back. And the display won’t be as sharp as it should be a 6.1-inch LCD display.

A previous rumor indicated that this new model could come in a wide range of colors including grey, white, blue, red and orange. Bloomberg confirms that the disparition of the home button means that this phone will get Face ID.

On the software side, it sounds like the bigger 6.5-inch iPhone could let you run two apps side-by-side, pretty much like opening two apps on the iPad. If Apple follows its usual pattern, the company should unveil these new devices in just a couple of weeks.

Berkshire Hathaway has reportedly agreed to buy a stake in One97, the owner of India’s largest digital payments service Paytm . This would mark the first time the investment firm has invested in an Indian startup. According to Indian financial news site Mint, which first broke the news, Berkshire Hathaway, the investment firm headed by Warren Buffett, is set to buy shares worth about $300 million to $350 million, at a valuation of about $10 billion to $12 billion.

Another report in Bloomberg says Berkshire Hathaway will acquire a 3% to 4% stake in One97.

Paytm’s investors already include SoftBank, which led a $450 million round in Paytm earlier this year, and Alibaba. Already India’s largest digital wallet and payment service with 230 million registered users, Paytm has recently focused on adding a host of new mobile services that could potentially turn it into a WhatsApp competitor, including a messenger and games.

A spokesperson for One97 declined to comment. TechCrunch has also contacted Berkshire Hathaway.

Facebook is cracking down on the military leadership in Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country where the social network has been identified as a factor contributing to ethnic tension and violence.

The U.S. company said today that it removed accounts belonging to Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the military-owned Myawady television network.

In total, the purge has swept up 18 Facebook accounts, 52 Facebook Pages and an Instagram account after the company “found evidence that many of these individuals and organizations committed or enabled serious human rights abuses in the country.”

Some 30 million of Myanmar’s 50 million population is estimated to use Facebook, making it a hugely effective broadcast network. But with wide reach comes the potential with misuse, as has been most evident in the U.S.

But the Facebook effect is also huge far from the U.S. A report from the UN issued in March determined that Facebook had played a “determining role” in Myanmar’s crisis. The situation in the country is so severe that an estimated 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees are thought to have fled to neighboring Bangladesh following a Myanmar government crackdown that began in August. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has labeled the actions as ethnic cleansing.

Facebook’s action today comes a week after an investigative report from Reuters found more than 1,000 posts, comments and images that attacked Rohingya and other Muslim users on the platform.

“During a recent investigation, we discovered that they used seemingly independent news and opinion Pages to covertly push the messages of the Myanmar military. This type of behavior is banned on Facebook because we want people to be able to trust the connections they make,” Facebook said in a statement.

“While we were too slow to act, we’re now making progress – with better technology to identify hate speech, improved reporting tools, and more people to review content,” it added.

Every Startup Battlefield is an absolute thrill ride, but we get even more charged up when it all goes down in a region where the tech startup ecosystem is taking rapid shape. TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018 — our first pitch competition in this region — is the perfect example.

It’s time to shine the spotlight on the best early-stage startups in the Middle East and North Africa, and we want you to join us on October 3 in Beirut, Lebanon to cheer them on. Attending our premier startup pitch competition costs $29, and tickets are on sale here.

Chances are you haven’t had the pleasure of witnessing Startup Battlefield. Here’s what to expect. Up to 15 teams will compete in three preliminary rounds — five startups per round. Those teams each get six minutes to present a live demo to a panel of tech and VC experts. The judges have six minutes after each pitch to ask tough, pointed questions.

Only five teams move on to the final round, and that means another pitch and Q&A session with a fresh set of equally qualified judges. One startup will earn the title of best startup in the Middle East and North Africa and reign as champion of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018. Oh, and the founders also win a US$25,000 no-equity cash prize, plus a trip for two to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019 (assuming the company still qualifies to compete at the time).

This fast-paced action takes place live in front of an enthusiastic audience (that’s where you come in) of entrepreneurs, startup founders, investors and tech heads. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be inspired to compete in the next Startup Battlefield.

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018 takes place in the Beirut Digital District in Lebanon on October 3. Come experience the fun, the excitement and the sheer joy of seeing the very future of technology unfold right in front of you. Not a bad way to spend $29. Click right here to purchase your ticket.

Travelstop is a new startup in Singapore that aims to bring the benefits of business travel management to SMEs and other smaller companies in Southeast Asia.

The company launched its product today after being founded in November 2017 by three entrepreneurs who worked at TravelMob, the Singapore startup bought by HomeAway in 2013. Prior to TravelMob, the trio — Prashant Kirtane (CEO), Vijay Aggarwal (CTO) and Altaf Dhamani (CPO) — worked together at Yahoo Southeast Asia. They all moved over to HomeAway, which was later bought by Expedia for $3.9 billion in 2015 and Travelstop is their first independent venture following that spell.

That’s a huge amount of experience for a newly-formed startup in Southeast Asia, and already it has assembled a team of 12 with more vacancies open.

Kirtane told TechCrunch in an interview that 90 percent of business travel in Asia is unmanaged. That’s surprising since the region accounts for 40 percent of the $1.2 trillion global business travel market. He said that he and his co-founders can also recall the pain of unmanaged or rigid travel and expense systems and are vowing to solve it with Travelstop.

The focus is on simplicity — Kirtane said Slack is its role model for design — with features such as clean UI, automated expense reporting, flexible travel policy, and data-based insight to allow business teams to analyze travel and expense costs. The service includes desktop and mobile apps.

All of these are still missing in Southeast Asia — at least at the price that can appeal to SMEs and startups — while often global services, such as Concur, aren’t sufficiently localized to cover low-cost airlines or a wider array of hotels. (On this, I can agree!)

“Many other tools corporate tools are still rudimentary and haven’t progressed,” Kirtane added. “We’re looking to reach mid-size tech companies first, but the – longer-term proposition is to let employees onboard themselves.”

Travelstop is letting early customers use its product for free, but the business model that will arrive soon will be Saas-based. The team is also working to integrate existing systems, including Expensify, and other third-party services to let Travelstop users book travel and claim expenses off-platform.

The company has raised $1.2 million to kick things off, and Kirtane said the startup may look to raise more in early 2019 as it begins to expand its engineering and sales teams and launch local offices.

The seed round was led by SeedPlus, the early-stage firm connected with Jungle Ventures, and an unnamed travel-focused firm in the U.S. Travelstop said angel participants included Dan Lynn and Vikram Malhi, ex-Expedia senior business leaders and founders of Zuzu Hospitality Solutions, David Ko, who is president and COO of Rally Health, and Jarrod Howe, who is regional operations director at Hyper Island
Singapore.