Year: 2018

Croatia scored and the score is now 1-1 against England. If you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, you might not know that because YouTube TV has been down for around 40 minutes. Update: It’s back just in time for extra time.

People who pay $40 a month to subscribe to live TV on YouTube are arguably mad. One of the main reasons YouTube TV makes sense is that it lets you watch live sports. You won’t find any soccer match on Netflix or HBO Now after all.

YouTube has tweeted about the issue, but this isn’t a quick downtime. As Owen Williams tweeted, if Google can’t keep the live stream up during the World Cup, it’s unclear which company can do it.

Maybe our live-streaming future is not ready yet.

“Disruption” is a term (over)used in the technology world to describe some development or product that is inherently good. The formal definition of the term, however, is at odds with its casual use: a disruption is a ‘disturbance or problem that interrupts an event, activity, or process.’ Right now, space tech is currently experiencing both flavors of disruption.

Reliable estimates indicate that, within the next 5-7 years, the inhabitants of the Earth will launch more satellites into space than have been launched in the history of our planet up until now. This is a disruption in the best sense, however, there’s a serious problem: we’re at a very real risk of crushing our own excitement and stalling our progress towards the stars. Space policy hasn’t been high on our government’s to-do list, and this unfortunate regulatory neglect means that today’s most innovative companies’ plans are being disrupted by stuffy, antiquated rules and regulations.

Image: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Existing space policy

For those who haven’t recently brushed up on existing space policy, a widely adopted international agreement called the “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies” was negotiated, signed, and drafted in 1967 by the United Nations. Commonly referred to as The Outer Space Treaty, the agreement dictates that each nation be responsible for all and any of the space activities originating from their nation — whether they’re conducted by citizens, companies, or the government itself. Each must also maintain full jurisdiction and control over all space objects originating from their country.

It is noteworthy that, at the time the treaty was signed, nobody could fathom that commercial companies might want anything to do with outer space, let alone launch their own satellites

Permits… and the FCC

OK, so the US government is responsible for our space activity and space objects, right? That means it somehow needs to know — and track — anyone and anything that goes up, and this is no small task. It’s not like we can perform mandatory vehicle inspections when satellites cross the Karman Line, marking the border between atmosphere and space. So how do we track them? By issuing permits before they launch. And while we’re talking about word definitions, ‘permit’ loosely translates to ‘huge government bureaucratic morass.’

The current system in place involves getting permission from the FCC, which is strange because when you think ‘satellites’, I highly doubt that the FCC comes to top-of-mind as the appropriate expert agency. The logic goes that if you’re planning to launch an object into space, then surely you’re planning to communicate with it somehow — whether by beaming up commands or beaming down data — and this requires the use of radio frequencies, which are coordinated by the FCC. If you’re going to be making a call to the FCC anyway, then this might be an appropriate place to conduct a ‘vehicle inspection’ and put a permit sticker on the back of your satellite.

The problem is that the FCC now becomes the gatekeeper for all things related to satellites, extending to many checkboxes that have nothing to do with radio frequencies. For instance, the FCC requires all permit applicants to prove that their satellite won’t cause injury or harm when/if it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere. You may not be surprised to learn that such a calculation involves more than a couple of dubious assumptions and some fuzzy math, and perhaps another agency (ahem, NASA?) might be better suited to checking this.

Among the many checkboxes, the FCC also requires launch permit applicants to prove that their satellites will be ‘trackable’ in space so that they can be monitored ostensibly, to foresee potential collisions with other satellites. It was this requirement that disrupted satellite manufacturer Swarm Technologies, who applied for FCC permission to launch their tiny SpaceBee satellites to disrupt the Internet of Things from space (see what I did there with ‘disruption?’). Now, these satellites are smaller than pretty much anything ever put into orbit — an enviable innovation! — and so the FCC determined that they might not show up on the usual radars used to track satellites. Permit denied. Which is confusing, since smaller satellites have been permitted and launched by the same agency.

Consequences for startups

The logical path forward is to appear before the FCC with hat in hand and appeal for a legitimate permit. This is the way things have been done in the past, when it took 10 years for giant aerospace companies to build a satellite; there was plenty of time to wait for bureaucracy.  But put yourself in the seat of a disruptive startup who is building an entire small satellite in a few months: your company is consuming venture cash at a steady burn rate towards zero and you need to demonstrate your tech in space to get your next pile of cash. If you take a number in the FCC lobby and wait your turn, then the likely outcome is that your permit will be delivered to the address of a bankrupt company.

Faced with the prospect of this, there’s no doubt that ambitious and bold startups will be tempted to push the boundaries and see just how severe the penalties will be for operating sans permit (and in fact, that seems to be the path taken by the Swarm team). At this point, nobody really knows what the real consequences are. In the worst case, they will destroy the entire business of the startup that dares, but then bankruptcy might have been pretty much guaranteed anyway, based on the undetermined time of the FCC appeal process.  An interesting alternative exists: a company can try to export their satellite to another country and try their hand in that country’s space permitting process. Needless to say, federal regulations that encourage US companies to take their tech offshore are not how we want to do business, and oh-by-the-way satellite export laws are such a mess they make the launch-permitting process look like buying an entrance pass to a national park in comparison.

Archinaut, a robotic system developed by Made in Space, can manufacture, assemble and repair satellites, spacecraft or other large equipment in zero gravity.

Fixing a broken system for the new space era

How do we fix a broken system? You can bet we won’t alter international treaties any time soon, so it’s safe to assume we’re stuck with what’s set forth by The Outer Space Treaty. One foreseeable option by the government would be to put stronger teeth into existing policies and laws, so that devastating penalties are issued to any renegade companies. The effect of this would be predictable: emerging startups with exciting new ideas will be stifled, while the corporate giants of the space industry’s old guard will remain untouched. On the other hand, the government could choose to look the other way and merely slap wrists, but this could invite even more dangerous and egregious violations down the line that would prove hazardous to the responsible space actors.

Because of the Outer Space Treaty, the US will always be required to monitor and track all satellites from our nation. Concepts like the space-equivalent of the FAA have been proposed, as have mandatory radio-beacons on each satellite, self-identifying them like ships at sea.  So far, this is all just chatter and nothing has been enacted. In the meantime, the New Space renegades will continue to explore the boundaries by pushing them, while the old guard will express outrage over the insolence of the disrespectful youngsters. It may be that the only solution is for the new explorers to self-organize and self-police to bring order to the chaos.

In any case, we are in dire need of a forward-thinking approach to space policy and regulation that includes and goes beyond just Earth-orbiting satellites. If our government continues to ignore the need for comprehensive space policy that is expandable to pervasive commercial activity, it’s just a matter of time before a major civil, commercial, or international dispute occurs in space that could prove legally catastrophic.

Our 13^th annual TechCrunch Summer Party at August Capital takes place on July 27, and we’re happy to announce we’ve just released a fourth batch of tickets to this fun Silicon Valley tradition. These tickets have been moving at a brisk pace, so if you’d like to join us in Menlo Park, be sure to buy your ticket today.

Come and spend a relaxing evening of cocktails and conversation with your peers. Celebrate your shared entrepreneurial spirit in a beautiful setting (gotta love that deck) at August Capital. Meet and greet new, interesting and influential people — who might one day make your dreams come true.

We love to tell the story of when Box founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith met one of their first investors, DFJ, back when our founder, Michael Arrington held these TechCrunch parties in his Atherton backyard. You just never know who you’ll meet at the TechCrunch Summer Party at August Capital.

Check out the party particulars:

• July 27, 5:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• August Capital in Menlo Park
• Ticket price: $95

If you’re a founder of an early-stage startup, you might consider another way to network at this event. Get a Summer Party demo table and showcase your early-stage startup at this legendary soiree. In addition to the demo table, you get four attendee tickets. Learn more about demo tables here.

Food, drink, conversation, possibility — it’s all on the menu at the TechCrunch Summer Party. And it wouldn’t be a TechCrunch event without door prizes, including TechCrunch swag, Amazon Echos and tickets to Disrupt San Francisco 2018.

Tickets are available on a strictly first-come, first-served basis, so don’t put it off any longer — buy your ticket today.

Real estate platform Nestio is getting new funding as it continues to expand its footprint beyond New York City into other large U.S. markets. The startup’s software gives real estate owners and managers a hub to handle things like leasing and marketing.

The round, which they announced today, was led by Camber Creek and Trinity Ventures with participation from a bunch of other real estate firms including Rudin Ventures, Currency M, The Durst Organization, LeFrak Ventures and Torch Venture Capital. The startup has raised around $16 million to date.

Nestio is building up its unit count in new markets including Boston, Chicago, Houston and Dallas and seeking to expand operations with existing customers in NYC. The startup says that it’s grown the amount of units on its platform by 250 percent in the past 12 months.

“We now have hundreds of thousands of listings on the platform that people are now managing,” Nestio CEO Caren Maoi told TechCrunch. “Part of that growth is net new logos, but also expansion. So we’ve seen a lot of growth — particularly in New York — although I think the same behavior will replicate itself once we have some longevity in some of those other cities.”

The company says they will be will use this new capital and strategic partnerships to “deliver advanced leasing and marketing solutions even faster.”

After a few years of waiting, Magic Leap says it will finally ship its first hardware this summer. The company has already detailed that the Magic Leap One would be shipping the device in 2018, but after scant follow-up it was a little dubious whether they would actually hit that deadline.

In a developer-focused Twitch stream, several Magic Leap employees offered details about the system specs for the augmented reality headset. Right off the bat, the startup noted that the device’s brain will be an Nvidia Tegra X2 system, probably one of the more powerful options for mobile devices, though it is bulky enough that the company needed to build a dedicated hip pack in order to house it.

Still no details on price.

The company has previously discussed that the Magic Leap One is intended for home use though it is mobile.

Plenty of questions still remain, including some critical missing technical details surrounding the display tech being used and how large the device’s field-of-view will be. The device will utilize hand-tracking and a physical controller and also will support eye-tracking. It’s unclear how these will all interact together and how much will be up to developer preferences. We’re also still waiting to get details on battery life.

Magic Leap has talked an awfully big talk about how groundbreaking their tech is, based on the brief demos they have showcased during their videos it’s pretty unclear what big software problems they have solved and how scalable their display hardware is for building towards the “sunglasses” aesthetic.

In a tweet, CEO Rony Abovitz teased other updates coming this week including updates to another (!!!) unreleased product called Magic Leap Next.

The startup has raised at least $2.3 billion according to Crunchbase from investors including Google, Alibaba, Andreessen Horowitz and a laundry list of others. Today, the company announced an investment from and partnership with AT&T.

Twitter is ready to squeeze a lot more money out of its trending topics. After minimizing its mediocre Moments feature and burying it inside the renamed Explore tab, Twitter is now starting to test Promoted Trend Spotlight ads. These put a big visual banner equipped with a GIF or image background atop Explore for the first two times you visit that day before settling back into the Trends list, with the first batch coming from Disney in the U.S.

These powerful new ad units demote organic content in Explore, which could make it less useful for getting a grip on what’s up in the world at a glance. But they could earn Twitter strong revenue by being much more eye-catching than the traditional Timeline ads that people often skip past. That could further fuel Twitter’s turnaround after it soundly beat revenue estimates in Q1 with $665 million. Its share price of about $44 is near its 52-week high, and almost 3X its low for the year.

“We are continuing to explore new ways to enhance our takeover offerings and give brands more high-impact opportunities to drive conversation and brand awareness on our platform,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch.

The Promoted Trend Spotlight ads are bought as an add-on to the existing Promoted Trends ads that are inserted amongst the list of Twitter’s most popular topics. When tapped, they open a feed of tweets with that headline with one of the advertiser’s related tweets at the top. Back in February, AdAge reported whispers of a new visual redesign for Promoted Trends. You can view a demo of the experience below.

Anthy Price, Disney’s executive vice president for Media, provided TechCrunch with a statement, saying “The Promoted Trend Spotlight on Twitter allowed us to prominently highlight Winnie the Pooh & celebrate the launch of ticket sales for Christopher Robin while four of the characters took over major Disney handles on the platform to engage with fans.”

Historically, Twitter’s biggest problem was that people skimmed past ads. The old unfiltered Timeline trained users to pick and choose what they read, looking past anything that didn’t seem relevant, including paid marketing. But with the shift to an algorithmic Timeline and bigger focus on video, Twitter has slowly retrained users to expect relevant content in every slot. Explore’s design, with imagery at the top followed by a text list of Trends, pulls attention to where these new Spotlight ads sit. With better monetization, Twitter will now have to concentrate on building better ways to get users to open Explore instead of just their feed, notifications and DMs.

There are always more fish in the sea. The once-comforting relationship advice has turned out to be a prophetic and overwhelming reality in the world of app and online dating. With ever-mounting numbers of profiles to look through and scrutinize for potential compatibility, one can start to feel stuck in a cycle of flirtation, failed first dates and constant repetition.

Hinge’s new feature, Most Compatible, aims to break that cycle by utilizing a Nobel Prize-winning algorithm to identify the matches you’re most likely to hit it off with and put one at the top of your Discover each day. The feature was released today for iOS and scheduled to be released for Android on July 17th.

“[With Most Compatible] we’re pairing you with someone,” said Hinge CEO Justin McLeod in an interview with TechCrunch. “So the person that you’re seeing is also seeing you, and this is the best pairing that we think that we can find [in our user base].”

To make these pairings, the app learns a user’s preferences through their liking and passing activity and uses that to pair them with a match whose preferences best align.

This method, called the Gale-Shapley algorithm, was designed in 1962 by mathematician and economists David Gale and Lloyd Shapley to answer a theoretical problem plaguing their fields: the stable marriage problem. While it may sound like something more suited to relationship counselors than mathematicians, the issue here is not infidelity or divorce, but combinatorics.

The ideal implementation of the Gale-Shapley algorithm works by optimally pairing people with partners they most prefer and ensuring that, in a large, even pool of single people, everyone can be matched.

For example, in a group evenly divided into men and women, the algorithm traditionally has individuals rank potential partners by level of preference and cycle through proposals and rejections until each individual is with the partner they prefer most (who isn’t already engaged).

There are some oversights in the original algorithm that Hinge worked through to make it applicable and useful for a modern love story.

The original stable marriage problem focuses on binary, heterosexual couples, and neglects relationships that don’t fit those standards. For these couples, Hinge uses a variation of the problem called the “stable roommate problem,” which groups individuals into a common pool and does away with gender divisions.

In early market tests of its Most Compatible feature, Hinge found that users were 8x more likely to go on dates (as signaled by an exchange of personal phone numbers) with matches found through Most Compatible than any other Hinge recommendations.

“This is a way for us to, essentially, go on all your bad dates for you, so that we can help figure out who you’ll end up with in the end,” said McLeod.

While it all seems a little too good to be true (or like the plot of the 2018 Netflix rom-com, My Perfect Romance or this episode of Black Mirror), this move comes after a successful streak for Hinge. The app saw nearly 400 percent user base growth following its redesign in 2016 and a recent 51 percent stock acquisition by Match group this June.

Hinge says that it’s not looking to take the choice or discovery out of the app, but just to make the path to a lasting relationship as easy as possible.

You never quite know what you’ll find on the dark web. In June, a threat intelligence team team known as Insikt Group at security research firm Recorded Future discovered the sale of sensitive U.S. military information in the course of monitoring criminal activity on dark web marketplaces.

Insikt explains that an English-speaking hacker purported to have documentation on the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle. Remarkably, the hacker appears to have been selling the goods for “$150 or $200.”

According to Insikt Group, the documents were not classified but also contained sensitive materials including “the M1 Abrams maintenance manual, a tank platoon training course, a crew survival course, and documentation on improvised explosive device (IED) mitigation tactics.” Insikt notes that the other set of documents appears to have been stolen from a U.S. Army official or from the Pentagon but the source was not confirmed.

The hacker appeared to have joined the forum explicitly for the sale of these documents and acknowledged one other incident of military documents obtained from an unaware officer. In the course of its investigation, Insikt Group determined that the hacker obtained the documents by accessing a Netgear router with misconfigured FTP login credentials. When the team corresponded with the hacker to confirm the source of hacked drone documents, the attacker disclosed that he also had access to footage from a MQ-1 Predator drone.

Here’s how he did it:

“Utilizing Shodan’s popular search engine, the actors scanned large segments of the internet for high-profile misconfigured routers that use a standard port 21 to hijack all valuable documents from compromised machines.

“Utilizing the above-mentioned method, the hacker first infiltrated the computer of a captain at 432d Aircraft Maintenance Squadron Reaper AMU OIC, stationed at the Creech AFB in Nevada, and stole a cache of sensitive documents, including Reaper maintenance course books and the list of airmen assigned to Reaper AMU. While such course books are not classified materials on their own, in unfriendly hands, they could provide an adversary the ability to assess technical capabilities and weaknesses in one of the most technologically advanced aircrafts.”

Insikt Group notes that it is “incredibly rare” for hackers to sell military secrets on open marketplaces. “The fact that a single hacker with moderate technical skills was able to identify
several vulnerable military targets and exfiltrate highly sensitive information in a week’s
time is a disturbing preview of what a more determined and organized group with superior
technical and financial resources could achieve,” the group warns.

French startup Alan has been mostly focused on its main health insurance product — a standard package for companies of all sizes and shapes. The company is launching a second offering on this market with Alan Blue.

Companies can now choose between two levels of insurance — Alan Green and Alan Blue. Alan Green is the existing health insurance product with a new name. It still costs the same and offers the same level of coverage. Alan Blue is a higher-end product with better coverage for companies who want to retain talent using better benefits.

French employees automatically get basic coverage from the national healthcare system. But companies also need to provide a health insurance from a private company to pay for part of the health expenses. It’s a hybrid system with a strong legal framework.

This is where Alan comes along as your employer signs a deal with an insurance company to cover all their employees. Usually, insurance companies provide multiple offerings. But Alan has historically focused on a single plan.

With Alan Green, you get good coverage starting at $59 (€50) per month per employee if you’re under 36 years old. It gets more expensive if you’re over 36, and then over 45, and then over 56 years old. Plans for employees over 56 cost $100 per month (€85).

Companies have to pay at least 50 percent of those plans. The rest is deducted from your pay. Some companies also choose to pay 100 percent of everyone’s health insurance to show that they really care about their employees.

Employees can also choose to cover their spouse and kids with Alan. Plans for a second adult cost the same as plans for employees. And you can cover all your kids for a $47 flat monthly fee (€40).

While you won’t pay anything if you see a normal medial practitioner, Alan Green couldn’t necessarily cover an expensive pair of glasses or extensive dental work.

Alan Blue is a second option for companies looking for a premium health insurance product. Companies now have to decide between the two plans for the entire staff. You can’t let employees decide between one plan or the other.

Alan Blue starts at $82 per month (€70) for young employees and also gets more expensive depending on the age of the employee. While there’s only a €20 difference between the two offerings for employees under 36 years old, the price difference is higher the older you get. Similarly, you can cover all your kids for a slightly more expensive $64 flat monthly fee (€55).

For companies that choose to fully pay for health insurance, it depends if you’re willing to spend more to provide better insurance. But some companies only pay part of the health insurance package. Employees will end up paying more if their companies switch from Alan Green to Alan Blue.

“Overall, companies that are growing rapidly tend to invest a lot for their employees and switch to Alan Blue,” co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian told me. “We already noticed that with companies in our existing clients. Some companies are also switching to Alan because they wanted something very high end before switching.”

Alan still plans to target small companies. The startup thinks that small companies are underserved by big insurance companies and tend to pay more for health insurance.

Alan Green is not going away anytime soon. Samuelian thinks you can combine Alan Green with Alan Map to find the perfect doctor around you and get fully reimbursed.

Alan Blue is already available to selected Alan customers. All companies will be able to sign up in September. You can already view all pricing and insurance details on Alan’s website.