Lime, the electric scooter and bike-share startup, has pulled some of its scooters from the streets of Los Angeles, San Diego and Lake Tahoe. That’s because of two hardware challenges the company has experienced, Lime wrote in a blog post last night.

In August, Lime says it became aware of a potential issue with some of its Segway Ninebot scooters. Specifically, Lime identified a problem with one of the two batteries in some of its earlier scooter versions.

“In several isolated instances, a manufacturing defect could result in the battery smoldering or, in some cases, catching fire,” Lime wrote on its blog. “We took this issue very seriously. Immediately upon learning of the defect, we worked with Segway Ninebot to create a software program to detect the potentially affected batteries. We then worked independently to create an even more thorough software program to ensure that no potentially faulty scooters remained in circulation. When an affected battery was identified — with a red code — we promptly deactivated the scooter so that no members of the public could ride or charge it.”

Lime says it then removed those scooters from circulation and “at no time were riders or members of the public put at risk.” But fast forward to more “recently,” and Lime has received another report that one of its Segway Ninebot scooters may be vulnerable to battery failure. In total, Lime says less than 0.01 percent of its scooter fleet is affected.

In addition to potential battery failures leading to fire, Lime has experienced issues with scooter manufacturer Okai. Specifically, Lime says it’s received reports that the baseboards can break after repeated abuse.

“It’s possible for Okai baseboards to crack or break if ridden off a curb at high speed,” Lime said. “We are currently studying this issue and incorporating these learnings into our design process.”

It’s not clear if Lime will continue to work with Segway, which it partnered with a few months ago around a next generation of scooters. It’s also not clear if Lime will continue to use scooters from Okai. I’ve reached out to Lime to learn more.

Other electric scooter companies rely on Segway’s Ninebot, including Bird.

“Upon reading the Washington Post news article pertaining to Lime’s recall, we contacted Segway Ninebot to obtain their verification that all scooters purchased by Bird are free of any manufacture defects found in Lime’s earlier model scooters,” a Bird spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We have conducted our own initial investigation of the reported claims and believe that none of the vehicles Bird purchased from Segway Ninebot are affected. At Bird, our number one priority is the safety of our riders, chargers, mechanics, and all others who interact with our vehicles”

TechCrunch has reached out to Segway for comment.

It’s worth noting that in San Francisco, operators Skip and Scoot do not use Segway scooters. Skip modifies the Speedway Mini4 36V 21Ah while Scoot works with Telepod.

Titan could put an end to stock market FOMO. The app chooses the best 20 stocks by scraping top hedge fund data, adds some shorts based on your personal risk profile and puts your money to work. No worrying about market fluctuations or constantly rebalancing your portfolio. You don’t have do anything, but can get smarter about stocks thanks to its in-app explanations and research reports. Titan wants to be the easiest way to invest in stocks for a mobile generation that wants an affordable coach to guide them through the market themselves.

“Our goal is to take things that aren’t accessible [in wealth management] and make them accessible, starting with hedge funds,” says Titan co-founder Joe Percoco. That potential to democratize one of the keys to financial mobility has won Titan a $2.5 million seed round from Y Combinator’s co-founder Paul Graham, president Sam Altman and partners including Gmail creator Paul Bucheit. The rest of the capital comes from Maverick Ventures, BoxGroup and Liquid2 Ventures.

“Titan is where investing meets virality,” says Graham. “Those are two very powerful forces.” Since TechCrunch broke the news of Titan’s launch in August, it’s doubled its assets under management to $20 million and hired its first non-founder engineer.

Now it’s launching in-app educational videos so stock market dummies can get up to speed if they want to understand where their money’s going amidst a swirling see of financial news. “There are so many different headlines telling so many different narratives,” Percoco tells me. “Everyone is searching for explanations in a voice they trust. An ‘ETF’ can’t talk back. Sometimes a human face is better than writing. A video can really help people make choices.” Here’s its two-minute video about Facebook’s Q2 earnings a few months ago, explaining why the share price crashed 25 percent:

Percoco and Clayton Gardner met on their first day of Wharton business school, while their third co-founder was earning a hedge fund patent and studying computer science at Stanford. They went on to work at hedge funds and private equity firms like Goldman Sachs, but got fed up just growing the fortunes of the already rich.

So they started Titan to invent a modern, mobile version of BlackRock, the investment giant founded in the 1980s. Titan uses the public disclosures of hedge funds to find consensus around the 20 best performing stocks. With as little as $1,000, users can let Titan robo-manage their investments for a 1 percent fee on assets. Users provide some info on how big they want to gamble, and Titan personalizes their portfolio with more or less conservative shorts to hedge their bets.

Titan’s simplicity combined with the sense of participation could help it grow quickly. It sits between do-it-yourself options like Robinhood or E*Trade, where you’re basically left to fend for yourself, and totally passive options like Wealthfront and Betterment, where you’re so divorced from your portfolio that you’re not learning. Managed hedge funds and fellow active investment vehicles like BlackRock with a human advisor can require a $100,000 minimum investment that’s too steep for millennials.

“Even the best hedge fund in the world is only going to send you a PDF every 90 days,” Percoco explains. But Titan doesn’t want you nervously checking your portfolio non-stop. “Our median user checks the app once per day.” That seems like a healthy balance between awareness and sanity. It thinks its education and informative push notifications make it worth a higher required investment and fees than Wealthfront charges.

Essentially, Titan is a stock trading auto-pilot merged with a flight simulator so you improve your finance skills without having to fear a crash. Percoco tells me the sense of accomplishment that engenders is why clients say they’re telling friends about Titan. “When I invest, I look for companies that are growing quickly and making a huge positive impact on the world. Titan is one of those companies,” investor Altman says. “I think they could improve the financial well-being of an entire generation.”

French startup Lendix is changing its name to October. The company is using this opportunity to redesign its branding assets and refresh the design of the website for new users. The product remains the same — a lending platform connecting individual and institutional investors with small and medium companies.

October had to change its name for multiple reasons, including the fact that Lendix sounds a bit too French for a company that wants to become a European leader. But the company used this opportunity to move away from its original, pretty boring name. Lendix is a straightforward name that suggests that it’s all about lending money.

But there are so many companies with “lend” in their names that it quickly became a disadvantage — Lendopolis, Unilend, Lendosphère, LendingClub…

October is easy to understand and to write down in a casual conversation. If the company wants to branch out and start offering other financial products, it won’t be awkward.

That’s about it. I just wanted to note the change given that I’ve covered October a few times over the years.

Twitter is adding more nuance to its spam reporting tools, the company announced today. Instead of simply flagging a tweet as posting spam, users can now specify what kind of spam you’re seeing by way of a new menu of choices. Among these is the option to report spam you believe to be from a fake Twitter account.

Now, when you tap the “Report Tweet” option and choose “It’s suspicious or spam” from the first menu, you’re presented with a new selection of choices where you can pick what kind of spam the tweet contains.

Here, you can pick from options that specify if the tweet is posting a malicious link of some kind, if it’s from a fake account, if it’s using the Reply function to send spam, or if it’s using unrelated hashtags.

These last two tricks are regularly used by spammers to increase the visibility of their tweets.

Often, high-profile Twitter users will see replies to their tweets promoting the spammers’ content. For example, check any of @elonmusk’s thread for crypto scammers’ tweets – a problem so severe, that when Elon played along one time as a joke, Twitter locked his account.

Using hashtags, meanwhile, allows spammers to get attention from those people searching Twitter’s Trends.

And of course, spammers are often posting prohibited content, like malicious links, links to phishing sites, and other dangerous links.

But Twitter users will probably be most interested in the new option to report fake accounts.

There’s been a lot of name-calling on Twitter today following the emergence of reports of Russian bots and trolls flooding Twitter, in an attempt to influence U.S. politics with disinformation. Often, users in disagreements on the site will call someone “bot” as a way to shut down a conversation.

Twitter itself has been suspending real bots left and right in recent months. It deleted 200,000 Russian troll tweets earlier this year, for example, and suspended more than 70 million fake accounts in May and June, according to reports.

Now users will be able to report those accounts they believe to be bots, as well.

To what extent Twitter will rely on these user-generated reports over its own algorithmic-based bot detection systems, or other factors (like IP addresses or suspicious behavior), is unclear.

It’s also unclear if people can ban together to mass report an account as “fake” in an attempt to remove a real person’s account. But someone will surely soon test that out.

Prior to the change, users were able to report spam but not the type of spam, Twitter’s documentation today still confirms.

Twitter tells us the updated reporting flow will simply allow the company to collect more detail so it can “identify and remove spam more effectively.”

Spotify’s got a new promotion to entice users to sign up for a Premium Family plan. Commit to $15 a month plan for up to six members and the streaming service will toss in a free Google Home Mini.

It’s an interesting promotion from the standpoint of Spotify and Google’s growing partnership. While Google’s long had its own music streaming service under the Play banner, it’s failed to set the world on fire. As such, the company has long let users choose their default service when setting up a Google Home device.

Spotify, of course, doesn’t have the sort of smart home infrastructure of its largest competitor, which puts the company at a kind of disadvantage as it attempts to maintain its marketshare lead, while Apple Music continues to grow. The deal marks both an easy promotion for Spotify and an attempt to help establish its place as part of the growing connected home ecosystem. For Google, it’s yet another opportunity to get its entry-level smart speaker into more homes.

Also, hey, free Home Mini.

Both new and existing subscribers can take advantage of the promotion, which runs through the end of the year.

In 2015 Switzerland was fucked. This blunt belief, grunted out by Apple’s Jony Ive and repeated by the media as a death knell for the watch industry, seemed to define a sad truth: that the Swiss watch was dead and Apple pulled the trigger.

Now, three years and four Apple Watches later, was Ive right? Did Apple change the world? And, most importantly, did Switzerland survive?

Yes, but…

As you might have noticed the Swiss watch industry is still standing. The major Swiss houses – LVMH, Richemont, and Swatch Group – are seeing a major uptick in sales, especially in the US. According to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, sales are up 5.5% year-over-year, a bit of news that was, amusingly, almost buried by the onslaught of Apple Watch Series 4 reviews.

This increase of US sales bucked a major trend this year and one market insider, who preferred to remained anonymous, noted that all of his sales contacts are seeing increased sales in the $3,000 and above watch category. While the low-cost fashion watches were, as he said, “decimated,” the luxury market is growing. But why?

According to Swatch Group, Swiss watch exports rose 4.8 percent compared with last year and, according to a Reuters report, “first-quarter watch exports rose 10.1 percent, the highest quarterly growth rate since mid-2012, according to figures from the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry.”

“You know we saw an end of the year that was very strong – double-digit growth – and now it continues, so every month is a record month for us,” Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek told CNBC. In short, the industry is back from an all-time low after the recession.

Watch analysts believe that Apple created a halo effect. Of the millions of people who bought and wore an Apple Watch, a majority had never worn or thought about wearing a watch. Once they tried the Apple Watch, however, and outfitted it with leather bands, fancy Milanese loops, and outfit-matching colors the attitude changed. If wearing watches is so fun and expressive, why not try other, more storied pieces? The numbers are hard to find (watchmakers are notoriously secretive) but I’ve found that my own watch obsessives site, WristWatchReview, saw a solid uptick in traffic in 2015, one that continued, for the most part, into 2018. One year, 2017, was considerably lower because my server was failing almost constantly.

What does this mean for the watch? First, it means that, like vinyl, a new group of obsessives are taking up the collector’s mantle after discovering the implicit value of more modern forms of the same thing. An Apple Watch is a gateway drug to a Tissot which is a gateway drug to a classic tropical Rolex Submariner on a signed band just as your first Radiohead MP3 leads to buying a turntable, an amp, a Grado cartridge, and a pressing of Moon Shaped Pool.

“In high school I wore a pebble for a while,” said Brady, a 20-year-old college sophomore I spoke to. “As an easily-distracted high school student, even though this wearable was very primitive tech, it consumed a lot of my attention when it wasn’t appropriate to be on my phone – which meant also not appropriate to be on my watch. I then shifted to Nixon quartz ‘fashion watches ‘and i was happy knowing they kept good reliable time. Then I got a Seiko SNK805 automatic. I don’t have a single non-mechanical watch due to my respect for the craftsmanship!”

Wearables are changing, as well, pushing regular watches back into the spotlight. As Jon Speer, VP at Greenlight.Guru, most wearables won’t look like watches in the next few years.

“I predict the next generation of wearables to blur the lines between tech accessory and medical device. These ‘devices’ will include capabilities such as measuring blood pressure, blood sugar, body temperature and more,” he said. “The FDA is working closely with industry partners to identify common roadblocks to innovation. The De Novo Program, the classification Apple pursued for the Apple Watch, is the category for medical devices that don’t fall within an existing classification. As we blend medical technology with consumer technology, I foresee the De Novo program being utilized by companies such as Fitbit and Garmin. As a consumer, I’m very excited for the potential and advancements.”

Thus the habit of wearing watch might stick even as the originators of that habit – a little square of steel and glass strapped to your wrist – disappears.

Could it all be a mirage?

The new Apple Watch is very positively reviewed and Android Wear – as evidenced by companies like Montblanc selling very capable and fashion-forward smartwatches – is still a force to be reckoned with. Further, not everyone falls back into watch wearing after trying out the thing Jony Ive said would fuck Switzerland.

Watches are an acquired taste like craft beers, artisanal teas, and other Pinterest -ready pursuits. Sometimes simply strapping one to your wrist isn’t enough.

“I got the first gen Apple Watch,” said entrepreneur David Berkowitz. “I loved it, and then I stopped wearing it a bit. As I did, I lost the charger and never bothered replacing it. I haven’t worn it since and haven’t seriously considered getting a new one.”

“I’m just not that customer,” he said.

Last year, the top subscription video apps like Netflix and Hulu raked in a combined $781 million, and that trend is showing no sign of slowing down in 2018. In the third quarter of 2018, U.S. consumers spent an estimated $329 million in the top 10 subscription video-on-demand apps across the App Store and Google Play – a figure that’s up 15 percent from the $285 million spent in Q1.

The data is the latest in a new report from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which has been following the growth of subscription video apps for some time. Last year, for example, it found that Netflix’s app topped the charts in terms of revenue, when compared with all the other non-game apps on the market.

Netflix hasn’t fallen from its top ranked position, the new data shows. In fact, it’s continuing to grow.

The app pulled in an estimated $132 million in consumer spending across the app stores in Q3, which is up 78 percent from the $74 million spent in the third quarter of 2017.

However, Hulu is now growing faster, the report found. It saw subscription revenue jump 86 percent to $39 million, up from $21 million a year ago.

It seems some consumers may have made the move to Hulu thanks to the extra cash they had on hand, thanks to dropping their HBO subscription.

The only subscription video app that saw revenue decline in Q3 was HBO NOW, which took in $41 million in the quarter, down 40 percent from the $68 million in Q3 2017. But notably absent this quarter was the network’s biggest draw, “Game of Thrones,” which had been airing at this time last year. A drop was expected.

The top grossing chart of these subscription video apps for Q3 2018 looks very similar to last year’s in terms of the apps included, and sometimes, even their rankings.

But two services made moves, the report says.

YouTube TV jumped from $3 million in the year-ago quarter to $16 million in Q3 on Apple’s App Store, thanks to its expanded market penetration and consumer adoption. And ESPN Live Sports, which added in-app subscriptions in Q2, grossed $4.6 million in the third quarter, up 119 percent from Q2.

Even CBS is doing well, despite the fact that not everyone loves the new “Star Trek.”

Still, it appears CBS made a good move by betting on fans’ devotion to the franchise, as U.S. consumers spent $6 million in the app in Q3 2018, up 50 percent from the $4 million spent in Q3 2017.

The report’s data includes subscription revenues only, not refunds or in-app advertising revenues, Sensor Tower notes.

The broad increases in consumer spending on these video apps is yet another example of the significant and growing subscription business – much of which is taking place on mobile. Subscriptions accounted for $10.6 billion in consumer spend on the App Store in 2017, and are poised to grow to $75.7 billion by 2022, an earlier report found.

However, the top subscription apps aren’t all video apps. Others that consistently rank highly in the U.S. include Tinder, Spotify and Pandora, for example. Currently, the top grossing chart for the App Store includes a number of non-games, like Netflix (#1), YouTube (#2), Tinder (#3), Pandora (#4), Hulu (#7), and Bumble (#8).

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:

1. Waymo, take the wheel: Self-driving cars go fully driverless on California roads

The Alphabet-owned company has been testing on public roads for years now. But this permit, issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, allows Waymo to test these self-driving cars without a human driver behind the wheel.

Waymo said its driverless test cars will initially hit the streets near its Silicon Valley headquarters, including parts of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Palo Alto.

2. Facebook bans the Proud Boys, cutting the group off from its main recruitment platform

We reported in August that the Proud Boys operate a surprisingly sophisticated network for getting new members into the fold via many local and regional Facebook groups.

3. Up close and hands-on with the new iPad Pro

The new Pro, which Apple unveiled yesterday, marks what is arguably the single largest design change to the iPad line in its eight-and-a-half-year existence.

4. Facebook shares climb despite Q3 user growth and revenue

The social network stumbled again in Q3, but shares climbed after its latest earnings report, thanks in part to Facebook’s $5.14 billion profit and the addition of 1 million users in North America.

5. Twitter’s doubling of character count from 140 to 280 had little impact on length of tweets

According to new data released by Twitter, only 1 percent of tweets hit the 280-character limit, and only 12 percent are longer than 140 characters.

6. Apple pulls WatchOS 5.1 update after it bricked some Apple Watches

If you’re an Apple Watch owner having trouble finding the shiny new WatchOS 5.1 update, turns out it isn’t quite ready yet.

7. Starship is using self-driving robots to deliver packages on demand

Once your package arrives at a local Starship facility, the app will notify you. Then you can request a Starship bot that will deliver the package to you, wherever you are.

 

With Apple’s AirPower still missing in action, the Apple accessory ecosystem has been attempting to fill the need with similar products. Some of these third party products are better than others, and the new Base Station from Nomad looks to be the best of them all.

The Base Station does two things. One, it wireless charges up to three mobile devices. Two, it charges an Apple Watch through an integrated Apple MFi-certified Magnetic Apple Watch charger. More so, it looks great.

A padded leather surface covers three charging coils allowing the unit to recharge up to three devices — or one device laying horizontally across the pad. Each of the coils are Qi-certified and output at 7.5W. As for the Apple Watch, it can only be recharged using the included magnetic charger unless Apple activates Qi-compatibility through a software update.

The Nomad Base Station is available now for $120. Don’t have an Apple Watch? The same charging base is available for $20 less and still supports up to three devices.

Live streaming TV services, like Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, Hulu with Live TV, and others, are gaining steam in the U.S. as more consumers cut the cord with traditional pay TV. According to a new report from Conviva out this morning, these services (called virtual MVPDs) now account for over three-quarters of all plays and viewing hours in the U.S. That growth has come at the expense of dedicated apps from individual publishers, the report found.

Over the past 12 months, streaming TV services – the virtual MVPDs like Hulu with live TV, Sling TV, or PlayStation Vue – have seen a 292 percent increase in plays and a 212 percent increase in viewing hours, while publisher apps have seen declines of 16 percent and 19 percent, respectively, across those fronts.

The services have also been improving over time. Many suffered from glitches and outages at launch – and this continues today, on occasion. But overall, they’re more stable than in the past.

The report found that across these streaming TV services, there’s been a 22 percent decrease in video start failures, a 7 percent shorter wait time for video to start playing, 25 percent higher picture quality, and 63 percent less buffering.

The draw of streaming TV services is a cable TV-like experience with added benefits, like the ability to watch across devices, record shows to a cloud DVR that’s not (in theory) limited by disk space on a set-top box, integration with your smartphone’s notification system for alerts about favorite shows or events, and more.

But the ability to tune into live content – like live events and sports – is a major draw for cord cutters, as well.

Year-over-year, live TV content has seen a 49 percent increase in plays and a 54 percent increase in viewing time. The NFL is a huge part of this, with plays up 72 percent and viewing hours up 83 percent in Q3 2018, versus the year-ago quarter.

In the weeks that games were airing, NFL viewership accounted for 3 percent of total plays and 2.8 percent of all viewing hours in the U.S.

Because many viewers tune in at the same time to watch a live broadcast, compared with other content, there’s still room for improvement on this front. The firm also found that live television streams take 10 percent longer for videos to start, and see 72 percent more exits before the video starts, as a result.

The way consumers are watching streaming TV services is changing, too, the study said.

Though one benefit of these newer services is no longer being tied to a TV for viewing, it seems many still prefer it. While mobile viewing continues to grow – it’s up 57 percent year-over-year – it no longer dominates.

Connected TVs – such as those connected to Roku players, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, etc. – now account for as many streaming TV plays (38% on TVs) as mobile devices (39%). They also account for more than twice the viewing hours, with a 56 percent share to mobile’s 25 percent share.

Viewing on the PC is down by 18 percent, meanwhile.

Conviva, like other reports, have found that Roku leads the market – in this case, in terms of viewing hours. Roku accounted for 40 percent of viewing hours, but Amazon Fire TV gained. Amazon’s connected TV device platform increased its share of viewing hours from 3 percent to 18 percent over the past 12 months, and increase its share of plays from 4 percent to 19 percent.

The report is a snapshot of the industry that comes from Conviva’s global footprint of 50 billion streams per year across 3 billion applications and 200 million users. The company works with brands like Sling TV, HBO, Sky, Turner, Hulu, Discovery, CBS, Canal Digital, and others. That gives it deep insight into the streaming TV space to see trends, but not a complete look as not all providers are Conviva customers.