Year: 2018

Prediction markets, such as those that exist in the realm of fantasy sports, have taken off amongst consumers in the last few years. But fantasy sports have yet to make much of a play in one of the hottest areas online right now, namely eSports. And it’s a big market.

Fantasy eSports have been thriving across international markets. In 2017 over 360 million viewers watched League of Legends alone, significantly overtaking the SuperBowl viewership. By 2020 eSports industry is estimated to be worth over $1.5B, with the target audience being 21-35 years old. But quite how to take advantage of this arena has been a conundrum.

Now a new startup thinks it has the answer. What if you could create a live predictions market around eSports as it happens?

That’s the aim of WARD, a startup out of Berlin which has created a “pick and predict” real-time prediction smartphone game, where players can win real prizes.

Billed as a Fantasy eSports game which provides a second-screen real-time experience for tournaments, WARD has now secured a $600,000 Seed Round. The backers are Impulse VC, SmartHub and a number of European angel investors. The seed investment will be used to build out the product but also to expand in the lucrative markets of Asia and the US.

So how does it work? Well, fans who watch a championship or a specific eSports game can predict their version of in-game events in real-time. So, for example, in the League of Legends game, a user can make a prediction about who will spill “first blood” or which team will destroy the first tower in the game, and so on.

For every prediction users make correctly, they are awarded points. Users who acquire the most points can top the leaderboard and go on to win prizes. These can include headphones to tickets for championships, and well as signed merchandise such as team jerseys. Of course, this depends on the partner paying WARD to be featured. But, the more the user wins, the better prizes they get and the bigger the brand uplift for the team or sponsor.

Kirill Belov, managing partner at Impulse VC, says he was “stunned by the WARD technology, team and global vision. It is our first funding in the eSports industry, and WARD is one of the best platform to expand the scope of further investments.” High praise indeed.

WARD has so far run beta-tests in Berlin-based around the European League of Legends Championship Series but the official launch is set for June 2018 with an aim to attract 3 million downloads by the end of the year.

The plans also include global expansion to Asia and adding new eSports disciplines, such as Overwatch, CounterStrike (CSGO) to the app.

You can download the app here.

In April, YouTube TV confirmed rumors it was expanding its service by way of digital-only networks by launching two news channels from Cheddar. The streaming service was also expected to roll out channels from Tastemade and The Young Turks soon, reports said – something YouTube TV hoped would differentiate its service from the now numerous live TV streaming rivals, while leveraging the power of big-name online brands to attract new subscribers.

On Thursday, YouTube TV alerted customers by way of email it had added new channels Tastemade and TYT, along with Cheddar and Cheddar Big News, which had arrived earlier.

The company also confirmed the news in an interview with Variety, where the company explained how it saw this as the first step towards YouTube TV fulfilling its original promise of delivering a streaming service that combined traditional TV content with that from YouTube publishers.

Those efforts will continue, as YouTube TV says it’s in talks now with other partners to carry their digital media content on its network, too.

One challenge for YouTube TV in going about these new deals involves getting the publishers to craft unique content for its service – otherwise, the service could even blur the lines too much between YouTube proper, where some of the digital content may currently reside, and its paid, subscription-based TV service.

In Tastemade and TYT’s case, the publishers committed to producing original shows for YouTube TV, equating to several hundred hours of programming for subscribers, Variety noted. That’s 10 new series from Tastemade this year, and four from TYT Network at launch, with more to follow in 2018.

For the networks themselves, the deal allows them to reach new viewers who may have before only had minimal or no exposure to their content. And for Tastemade in particular, the channel will benefit from YouTube TV’s lack of food and travel channels – the service doesn’t carry Scripps/Discovery networks, which produce a lot of this type of content.

Despite the advantages with YouTube TV distribution, these digital publishers are by no means putting all their eggs in one basket – they expect to do similar deals with other over-the-top services. The Young Turks even just launched its own iOS app, following its $20 million raise last summer.

For the first time ever, Fortnite Battle Royale players have the chance to compete with one another for a huge amount of V-Bucks, the game’s virtual currency.

Fortnite Battle Royale often adds new wacky game modes, like 50 vs 50 or the much-memed Thanos game type made in conjunction with Marvel for Avengers: Infinity War.

Unlike those other game modes, however, Solo Showdown will not change the underlying game in any way — there is no extra shield, the storm doesn’t move any faster, and there are no extra weapon sizes or different team sizes.

Instead, Solo Showdown is a way to compete with other Battle Royale players in solo mode to discover who is the true GOAT.

Players must compete in 50 matches to join the leaderboard, and placement in each of those first 50 matches will determine overall ranking.

Prize pools are as follows:

• First Place: 50,000 V-Bucks
• Second Place to Fourth Place: 25,000 V-Bucks
• Fifth Place to Fiftieth Place: 13,500 V-Bucks
• Remaining Players in Top 100: 7,500 V-Bucks

Up until this point, V-Bucks could only be earned in increments of 100 after purchasing the Battle Pass, which lets players complete challenges and rank up to earn various cosmetic rewards and V-Bucks. Earning V-Bucks, rather than purchasing them with real money, has never netted much of a return. You can only earn enough V-Bucks to purchase maybe one mid-range item per season, or you can save them over the course of multiple seasons to purchase a high-end item.

For perspective, the most expensive items on Fortnite Battle Royale often cost around 2,000 V-Bucks, so a player with 50,000 V-Bucks is a rich player indeed.

Fortnite Battle Royale has been free to play since its launch, and its virtual currency represents a major revenue stream for Epic Games . While items purchased in the store offer no competitive advantage, they make the game fun and fresh.

However, the ability to earn these V-Bucks (in this large of a sum) is a welcome change to the current meta.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Today Matthew Lynley, Connie Loizos and I were joined by Semil Shah, the founder of seed-stage fund Haystack and venture partner at Lightspeed.

This week, we stuck to our roots: big rounds, venture capital liquidity thirst, one IPO, two Vision Funds, and three scooter jokes. Maybe more than three, but who is counting.

First up we took on Circle’s new $110 million round, working to understand why the firm is raising new capital at such a huge valuation (~$3 billion!). Also in play: Circle’s new lead investor isn’t a venture capital shop, making the monetary infusion all the more interesting. (Oh, and here’s more on the Basis stable coin we brought up.)

Next, we chatted through NEA’s plan to raise a fresh $1 billion to buy a lot of its stakes in startups that have yet to find an exit, allowing it, presumably, to return a chunk of capital to its own investors. The move is potentially fraught with conflict, we think, but perhaps it’s also the way of the future.

After that, it was time for an IPO break. Lynley had just got off the horn with the CEO we went through Pluralsight’s IPO that priced on Wednesday and started trading on Thursday. Short version: it went well.

Capping off this particular episode was a rundown of the potential for a new Softbank Vision Fund. What’s better than raising a half-squillion dollars? Raising a full squillion dollars.

So drink up, tech world. There’s still plenty of money to go around.

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield will be held at VivaTech in Paris on May 24th. We want to find the best early-stage startup from across continental Europe, ahead of TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin. The best way to do that is to bring some fantastic investors and founders along to judge the startups. Here’s our second round of judges to be announced, and there’s more to come!

Ophelia Brown, Founder, Blossom Capital
Ophelia is the founder of Blossom Capital, an early stage venture fund that brings a wholly differentiated approach to investing. Blossom makes a small number of high conviction investments each year, which allows the team to work closely with their companies, helping them achieve their ambitious goals. Fascinated by user behaviour and design, Ophelia loves worked with founders with strong product DNA and design-oriented teams. Ophelia is also the founder of ALT “Ambitious Ladies in Tech” – a mentor programme that matches junior women in technology start-ups with senior functional leaders to provide them with valuable coaching, skills development and networking. The network includes executives from some of the world’s leading tech companies like Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, Uber and many more. Previously Ophelia was a GP at LocalGlobe and a principal at Index Ventures where she led investments into a number of outstanding companies like Typeform and Robinhood.

Alexis Houssou, President & Co-founder, Hardware Club
Former entrepreneur and financier, Alexis started Hardware Club in 2015 with a mission to support the best hardware startups worldwide using collaboration and network effects. Through its unique $30M community-based fund, Hardware Club invests in hardware startups in Europe and in the US at seed stage. Alexis took part in launching several novel initiatives like the Hello Tomorrow Summit and the accelerator The Family. He also sits on the boards of companies including Remedee Labs, Reach Robotics, Aryballe and Keecker. Passionate about how tech can create impact on communities, Alexis regularly mentors startups in various programs including Techstars and StartupBootCamp. He is a graduate of EM Lyon Business School.

Raffi Kamber, Partner, Alvin Capital
Raffi joined Alven in 2011. He started his career as an engineer, joining Bouygues Telecom where he worked on core data networks. Priorto joining Alven, he was part of the venture capital team of the Parisian office of Gimv, a pan-European fund where he focused on tech investments. He graduated from Ensimag and holds an MBA from Insead.

Sébastien Groyer, Partner, Seventure Partners
Biotech engineer, Phd in philosophy on capitalism, Sébastien started his career as a VC more than 15 years ago at CDC-Entreprises. He co-founded the venture arm of Masseran Gestion (Groupe Caisses d’Epargne) in 2008, managing FCPIs and investing in the life sciences sector. Masseran Gestion merged which Seventure Partners in 2012. He then became a Partner in life sciences at Seventure. Sébastien has invested in more than 30 companies and is currently board member of Balyo, Global Bioenergies, Eligo, Domain Therapeutics, Skinjay.

Francesca Warner, Venture Advisor and CEO & Co-founder, Seraphim Capital
Francesca (known as Check) is a Venture Advisor at Seraphim Capital, the only Global Space Tech fund, investing £3-5m in the Space Ecosystem, including in companies like Spire and IceEye. Prior to joining Seraphim Capital, Check spent two and a half years at Downing Ventures, investing in over 30 early-stage technology businesses, with a focus on consumer health and deep technology. Before moving into Venture, Check worked for the global agency, AMV BBDO. She graduated from Corpus Christi, Cambridge, with a first class degree in 2012. Check is the co-founder and CEO of Diversity VC, the world’s first non-profit dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion in Venture Capital. In May 2017, Diversity VC produced the first ever study on the number of women in VC, in partnership with the BVCA. Diversity VC’s work was highlighted in the UK Government’s November 2017 budget.

Adzuna, the meta-search engine for jobs, has raised £8 million in Series C funding from Smedvig Capital. The U.K. company’s previous backers include Index Ventures, Passion Capital, LocalGlobe, and over 400 Crowdcube investors. It takes total funding to £12 million.

Founded by the team behind Gumtree, Zoopla and Qype, Adzuna essentially aggregates job listings across the web to offer a single destination to search for a job. It launched first in the U.K. in 2011 but has since expanded to 16 countries, in which co-founder Doug Monro tells me the U.K., U.S., Germany, Netherlands, France, and Brazil are its strongest markets.

“We’re growing very quickly in several of the others. We are really excited about the growth we are seeing in the U.S. in particular,” he says.

Across the 16 sites Adzuna operates, the jobs search engine is seeing 10 million monthly visitors, and has 7 million registered users. “Millions” of CVs have been uploaded to the site — no doubt drawn in by Adzuna’s data-driven “ValueMyCV” tool — and it currently aggregates 5,000 sources of jobs. But, perhaps more importantly, given its Series C backing, the company is disclosing over £1 million in monthly revenue.

Adzuna generates revenue by referring job seekers to jobs. Job ads are included for free in its search index to ensure it always lists every job available, but advertisers have the option to promote listings on a CPC basis similar to Google Adwords. “Some additional revenue is generated through labour market data sales and of course now from the Find a job contract which is publicly disclosed,” says Monro.

The ‘Find a job’ contract is major recent win for the company that saw it displace competitor Monster who ran the pre-existing Universal Jobmatch service for the U.K. government’s Department for Works and Pensions. The publicly procured contract is said to be worth £2.5 million per year.

“We’d been talking to the DWP for a number of years about our vision for how we could help use our tech to help make their service better,” Monro tells me. “Last year they decided to put the Universal Jobmatch out to tender. As a startup with little govtech experience, we thought we had very little chance, but with the help of the Public.io team, we gave it a shot. There was a lot of paperwork and processes to navigate, and we were lucky to have great mentors to help guide us through this, but we were also pleasantly surprised with how agile and open to change the DWP team were”.

Meanwhile, on who Adzuna’s most direct competitors are these days, Monro says there are a number of other job search engines that aggregate content in a similar way but that he believes the startup is taking the market to the next level by bringing innovative tools and smart data to bear, such as the ValueMyCV tool and machine-learning based matching. “It’s a huge market and we are focussed on building the best solution for job seekers. We see ourselves as competing in that sense with the likes of Indeed, Ziprecruiter and LinkedIn,” he says.

AI is being applied across the board in many industries worldwide, and its scope of influence is only likely to continue to expand as Kaifu Lee, a noted AI expert who was formerly head of Google China, recently told TechCrunch.

The main battle appears to be between companies in the U.S. and China, but this week a startup in Southeast Asia came out of stealth mode to show that innovation is present elsewhere in the world.

Ucare.ai is focused on applying AI on the healthcare system to increase efficiencies and help patient coverage. It focuses on three distinct audiences: patients, health providers and those who pay the bills.

In particular, the company uses deep learning and neural network algorithms to predict healthcare patterns in patients, and beyond, to reduce preventable hospitalization, and, in turn, save on costs and hassles. That also allows medical professionals and insurers to focus on the more obvious risk patients, Ucare.ai said.

The company was founded in 2016 by Neal Liu, an MIT graduate who career includes six years with Google and stints with Microsoft, eBay and others. The company picked up seed funding in 2016, finance executive Christina Teo came on board as CEO (Liu is CTO) a year later and this week Ucare.ai came out of stealth with the announcement of its $8.2 million Series A round from backers that include Walden International and Singapore’s Great Eastern.

Singapore is gaining ground as startup destination that locates founders within striking distance of Greater China whilst also giving them access to Southeast Asia, a nascent but fast-growing market where the ‘internet economy’ is tipped to reach $200 billion by 2025 according to a recent report co-authored by Google.

Ucare.ai spent its initial two years developing its core AI smarts, the backbone of its service, by stitching together de-identified healthcare data using a mix of publicly available information and data from private partners, before then building out products for the health sector.

“Healthcare costs are only going in one direction as people are living longer and chronic diseases become more prevalent,” Teo told TechCrunch an interview. “That means that costs are going up, and payers are paying more, while corporate health is receiving a lot of attention with corporate clients expecting cost coverage and intervention programs.”

Ucare.ai CEO Christina Teo (left) and CTO Neal Liu (right)

That’s the ecosystem Ucare.ai has set out to impact. With hospitalization one of the most significant costs, the startup wants to reduce that through AI-powered predictive services. Healthcare provider Parkway Shenton, which has over 1,000 clinics, is one public name that signed on with Ucare.ai with other partners as-yet-undisclosed. Clients like Parkway pay for various different products which can provide real-time predictions, or more regular report-like information, Teo explained.

Liu had been based in Singapore while at Google, and he saw an opportunity to develop the startup there whilst tapping into the unique features of the city-state.

“Singapore is ideal,” Teo, herself a Singaporean, told TechCrunch. “It has a robust healthcare system, is well audited, there’s tech adoption such as cashless payments, and data privacy is taken seriously.”

“It’s also a country where you can study people of different backgrounds and lifestyles, which makes it fairly good for scientists. The cost of businesses is reasonable, there are government grants and there’s talent,” she added.

There’s also the potential to expand the business. Ucare.ai has focused its efforts on Singapore, to date, but Teo said there are opportunities to move into neighboring markets to both improve the systems by adding more data and grow the business from a revenue perspective.

“The heavy lifting has been done in the last two years, now we’re looking at opportunities to scale and repeat the business models in other parts of Southeast Asia,” she said, adding that Greater China is also a focus of interest.

Right now, the startup has less than 20 staff with a blend of nationalities, but Teo said the headcount is climbing on “a near-daily basis.”

Other notable healthcare-focused startups in Southeast Asia include fellow Singapore-based CXA, which helps corporates provide quality healthcare to employees, and mClinica, which maps healthcare sales and data in the region.

This evening, Boring Company executives Elon Musk and Steve Davis offered a few more details about their plans to revolutionize LA urban transit, introducing the “Loop” which would eventually be composed of all-electric pods that transport up to 16 passengers at a time. Musk theorizes that the Loop could take Los Angeles residents from downtown LA to any terminal at the LAX airport within 8 minutes for about $1.

Much of the focus of the presentation was to assure the public that the Boring Company’s efforts would not be disruptive to the public or heavily stress the city’s existing highway systems. While the company has been best known for its hat and flamethrower sales, its most daunting challenge is courting public opinion for its plans to upgrade LA’s transport infrastructure.

The odd little presentation held at an LA synagogue started about 25 minutes behind schedule after a late arrival from Elon Musk who ironically said he got stuck in traffic. Musk offered a few minutes of eccentric discussion about why flying cars couldn’t solve the problem of “soul-destroying traffic.” Tunnels, on the other hand, Musk detailed were “way less nerve-racking than flying cars” and still “so fun.”

Alongside the execs onstage was Boring Company “mascot” Gary the snail.

Musk said that Boring Company Loop’s vision of the future would be much more congruous with city life than subways, and that while it was very difficult to weave large stations into a city, building many more parking spot-sized stations could theoretically be much more effective. Musk also noted that he hoped the Loop would supplement existing transport systems and connect public transport lines.

To get moving towards this “Loop” vision, the company will begin with a 2.7 mile test tunnel on private property with private funds. Just last month, SEC documents were filed detailing that Musk’s Boring Company had raised just shy of $113 million.

Once the test site has been completed, Musk suggested that they would begin offering free rides which he hoped the company could make as fun as a Disney theme park, joking that guests could “bring [their] flamethrowers.”

As Musk has previously noted, the Boring Company’s focus will prioritize pedestrian traffic rather than pods that house vehicles. While the executives were sure to distinguish the difference between the “Loop” and the Hyperloop, Musk also theorized that the two systems could eventually be seamlessly connected so riders could travel within the city and between cities with minimal friction.

Musk was notably asked during a Q&A about whether the Boring Company would do a full environmental impact report. He noted that they would but given the length of the process would do so once moving towards a larger-scale project rather than on one of the test tunnels.

It’s clear from the presentation that things are very much in their early stages, but Musk and Davis seemed to do a good job assuring the public that they would be moving with the bureaucracy on this project rather than trying to push their vision forward quickly and recklessly.

Following Apple’s education event in Chicago in March, I wrote about what the company’s announcements might mean for accessibility. After sitting in the audience covering the event, the big takeaway I had was Apple could “make serious inroads in furthering special education as well.” As I wrote, despite how well-designed the Classroom and Schoolwork apps seemingly are, Apple should do more to tailor their new tools to better serve students and educators in special education settings. After all, accessibility and special education are inextricably tied.

It turns out, Apple has, unsurprisingly, considered this.

“In many ways, education and accessibility beautifully overlap,” Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s Senior Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, said to me. “For us, the concept of differentiated learning and how the accessibility tools that we build in [to the products] help make that [learning] possible is really important to us.”

Apple’s philosophy towards accessibility and education isn’t about purposely targeting esoteric use cases such as IEP prep or  specialized teaching methodologies.

In fact, Apple says there are many apps on the iOS App Store which do just that. The company instead believes special education students and teachers themselves should take the tools as they are and discover creative uses for them. Apple encourages those in schools to take the all-new, low-cost iPad and the new software and make them into the tools they need to teach and learn. It’s a sentiment that hearkens back how Steve Jobs pitched the original iPad: It’s a slab of metal and glass that can be whatever you wish it to be.

In other words, it’s Apple’s customers who put the ‘I’ in iPad.

In hindsight, Apple’s viewpoint for how they support special education makes total sense if you understand their ethos. Tim Cook often talks about building products that enrich people’s lives—in an education and accessibility context, this sentiment often becomes a literal truism. For many disabled people, iOS and the iPad is the conduit through which they access the world.

Apple ultimately owns the iPad and the message around it, but in actuality it’s the users who really transform it and give it its identity. This is ultimately what makes the tablet exceptional for learning. The device’s design is so inherently accessible that anyone, regardless of ability, can pick it up and go wild.

(Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

Apple’s education team is special

At the March event, one of the on-stage presenters was Kathleen Richardson, who works at Apple on their ConnectedED program. She is one of many who work on the company’s education team, whose group is tasked with working with schools and districts in evangelizing and integrating Apple products into their curricula.

spoke with Meg Wilson, a former special education teacher who now works on education efforts inside Apple. A former Apple Distinguished Educator, Wilson is the resident “special education guru” who provides insight into how special education programs generally run. With that knowledge, she provides guidance on how Apple products can augment the process of individualizing and differentiating educational plans for special ed students.

A focus of our discussion was the Schoolwork app and how it could be used to suit the needs of teachers and support staff. One example Wilson cited was that of a speech therapy session, where a speech pathologist could use Schoolwork not necessarily for handouts, but for monitoring students’ progress towards IEP goals. Instead of the app showing a worksheet for the student to complete, it could show a data-tracking document for the therapist, who is recording info during lessons. “What we need in special ed is data—we need data,” Wilson said. She added Schoolwork can be used to “actually see the progress” students are making right from an iPad without mountains of paper. A key element to this, according to Wilson, is Schoolwork’s ability to modernize and streamline sharing. It makes conferring with other members of the IEP team a more continuous, dynamic endeavor. Rather than everyone convening once a year for an annual review of students’ progress, Wilson said, Schoolwork allows for “an amazing opportunity for collaboration amongst service providers.”

Wilson also emphasized the overarching theme of personalizing iPad to suit the needs of teacher and student. “When you are creative with technology, you change people’s lives,” she said.

To her, iPad and especially the new software scale for different learners and different environments really well. For special educators, for instance, Wilson said it’s easy to add one’s entire caseload to Schoolwork and have progress reports at the ready anytime. Likewise, the ability in Classroom to “lock” an entire class (or a single student) into an activity on iPad, which takes its cues from iOS’s Guided Access feature, helps teachers ensure students stay engaged and on task during class. And for students, the intuitive nature of the iPad makes it so that students can instantly share their work with teachers.

But it isn’t only Apple who is changing education. Wilson made the case repeatedly that third-party developers are also making Apple’s solutions for education more compelling. She stressed there are many apps on the App Store that can help in special education settings (IEP prep, communication boards, etc), and that Apple hears from developers who want to learn about accessibility and, crucially, how to make their apps accessible to all by supporting the discrete Accessibility features. Wilson shared an anecdote of an eye-opening experience for one developer, who expressed the idea of supporting accessibility “didn’t even occur to him,” but doing so made his app better.

One “big idea” that struck me from meeting with Wilson was how diverse Apple’s workforce truly is. Wilson is a former special education teacher. Apple’s health and fitness team reportedly is made up of such medical professionals as doctors and nurses. Apple’s education team is no different, as my conversation with Wilson attested. It’s notable how Apple brings together so many, from all walks of life, to help inform as they build these products. It really does intersect liberal arts with technology.

Apple makes learning code accessible to all

In early March, Lori Hawkins at the Austin American-Statesman reported on how Apple has made its Everyone Can Code program accessible to all. Hawkins wrote that representatives from Apple visited Austin’s Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to teach students to fly drones with code written in the Swift Playgrounds app. As you’d expect, Swift Playgrounds is fully compatible with VoiceOver and even Switch Control. “When we said everyone should be able to code, we really meant everyone,” Herrlinger told the Statesman. “Hopefully these kids will leave this session and continue coding for a long time. Maybe it can inspire where their careers can go.” Herrlinger also appeared on a panel at the SXSW festival, where she and others discussed coding and accessibility pertaining to Everyone Can Code.

For Global Accessibility Awareness Day this year, Apple has announced that a slew of special education schools are adopting Everyone Can Code into their curricula. In a press release, the company says they “collaborated with engineers, educators, and programmers from various accessibility communities to make Everyone Can Code as accessible as possible.” They also note there are “additional tools and resources” which should aid non-visual learners to better understand coding environments.

In addition to the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Austin, Apple says there are seven other institutions across the country that are implementing the Everyone Can Code curriculum. Among them are two Bay Area schools: the Northern California campuses of the California School for the Blind and the California School for the Deaf, both located in Fremont.

At a special kickoff event at CSD on Thursday, students were visited by Apple employees — which included CEO Tim Cook — who came to the school to officially announce CSB and CSD’s participation in the Everyone Can Code program.

Students arrived at the school’s media lab for what they believed to be simply another day of coding. In reality, they in for a  surprise as Tim Cook made his appearance. Members of Apple’s Accessibility team walked students through controlling drones and robots in Swift Playgrounds on iPad. Cook — along with deaf activist and actor Nyle DiMarco — toured the room to visit with students and have them show off their work.

In an address to students, Cook said, “We are so happy to be here to kick off the Everyone Can Code curriculum with you. We believe accessibility is a fundamental human right and coding is part of that.”

In an interview Cook told me, “Accessibility has been a priority at Apple for a long time.” He continued: “We believe in focusing on ability rather than disability. We believe coding is a language — a language that should be accessible to everyone.” When I asked about any accessibility features he personally uses, Cook said due to hearing issues he likes to use closed-captioning whenever possible. And because he wears glasses, he likes to enlarge text on all of his devices, particularly iPhone.

Accessibility-related Apple retail events

As in prior years, Apple is spending the month of May promoting accessibility and Global Accessibility Awareness Day by hosting numerous accessibility-centric events at its retail stores across the globe. (These are done throughout the year too.) These include workshops on the accessibility features across all Apple’s platforms, as well as talks and more. Apple says they have held “over 10,000 accessibility sessions” since 2017.

Today, on Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2018, Apple is holding accessibility-related events at several campuses worldwide, including its corporate headquarters in Cupertino, as well as at its satellite campuses in Austin, Cork, and London.

What’s worse than companies selling the real-time locations of cell phones wholesale? Failing to take security precautions that prevent people from abusing the service. LocationSmart did both, as numerous sources indicated this week.

The company is adjacent to a hack of Securus, a company in the lucrative business of prison inmate communication; LocationSmart was the partner that allowed the former to provide mobile device locations in real time to law enforcement and others. There are perfectly good reasons and methods for establishing customer location, but this isn’t one of them.

Police and FBI and the like are supposed to go directly to carriers for this kind of information. But paperwork is such a hassle! If carriers let LocationSmart, a separate company, access that data, and LocationSmart sells it to someone else (Securus), and that someone else sells it to law enforcement, much less paperwork required! That’s what Securus told Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) it was doing: acting as a middle man between the government and carriers, with help from LocationSmart.

LocationSmart’s service appears to locate phones by which towers they have recently connected to, giving a location within seconds to as close as within a few hundred feet. To prove the service worked, the company (until recently) provided a free trial of its service where a prospective customer could put in a phone number and, once that number replied yes to a consent text, the location would be returned.

It worked quite well, but is now offline. Because in its excitement to demonstrate the ability to locate a given phone, the company appeared to forget to secure the API by which it did so, Brian Krebs reports.

Krebs heard from CMU security researcher Robert Xiao, who had found that LocationSmart “failed to perform basic checks to prevent anonymous and unauthorized queries.” And not through some hardcore hackery — just by poking around.

“I stumbled upon this almost by accident, and it wasn’t terribly hard to do. This is something anyone could discover with minimal effort,” he told Krebs. Xiao posted the technical details here.

They verified the back door to the API worked by testing it with some known parties, and when they informed LocationSmart, the company’s CEO said they would investigate.

This is enough of an issue on its own. But it also calls into question what the wireless companies say about their own policies of location sharing. When Krebs contacted the four major U.S. carriers, they all said they all require customer consent or law enforcement requests.

Yet using LocationSmart’s tool, phones could be located without user consent on all four of those carriers. Both of these things can’t be true. Of course, one was just demonstrated and documented, while the other is an assurance from an industry infamous for deception and bad privacy policy.

There are three options that I can think of:

• LocationSmart has a way of finding location via towers that does not require authorization from the carriers in question. This seems unlikely for technical and business reasons; the company also listed the carriers and other companies on its front page as partners, though their logos have since been removed.
• LocationSmart has a sort of skeleton key to carrier info; their requests might be assumed to be legit because they have law enforcement clients or the like. This is more likely, but also contradicts the carriers’ requirement that they require consent or some kind of law enforcement justification.
• Carriers don’t actually check on a case by case basis whether a request has consent; they may foist that duty off on the ones doing the requests, like LocationSmart (which does ask for consent in the official demo). But if carriers don’t ask for consent and third parties don’t either, and neither keeps the other accountable, the requirement for consent may as well not exist.

None of these is particularly heartening. But no one expected anything good to come out of a poorly secured API that let anyone request the approximate location of anyone’s phone. I’ve asked LocationSmart for comment on how the issue was possible (and also Krebs for a bit of extra data that might shed light on this).

It’s worth mentioning that LocationSmart is not the only business that does this, just the one implicated today in this security failure and in the shady practices of Securus.