Month: June 2019

Bungie aims to fortify the popular but flagging Destiny 2 with an expanded free-to-play plan and universal cross-platform saving, the company announced today. It’s an interesting and player-friendly evolution of the “games as a service” model, and other companies should take note.

The base game, which is to say the original campaign and the first year of updates, will be available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Google Stadia. You can play as much as you want, and your progress will be synced to your account, so you can do some easy patrols on console and then switch to your PC’s mouse and keyboard for the more difficult raids.

The PS4 cross-save ability is a surprise, since Sony has resisted this sort of thing in the past and rumors had it before the announcement that they would be left out of the bargain. It’s heartening to see this level of cooperation, if that’s what it is, in the new gaming economy.

As part of Bungie’s separation from Activision, which published Destiny 2 to begin with, the game is now switching over to Steam on the PC. That’s probably a good thing for most, and you won’t lose any progress. It’s also being renamed “Destiny: New Light,” because why not?

Importantly, no platform will have any content advantage over another — no Xbox-specific guns or PC-specific levels. At a time when consoles are fighting one another on the basis of exclusives, this is a breath of fresh air.

The news was announced in a stream this morning, though players got a sneak peak when a publication I shall not name posted it slightly early. But we also learned more ahead of Bungie’s announcement when Google’s Stadia event showed the game coming to the streaming service in free form.

Destiny 2 came out two years ago and has had a number of expansions — and has also been free for limited times or platforms a handful of times. The base game was really a bit threadbare and honestly may not convince new players that it’s worth it to pay. But the price is right and if you like the basic gameplay the expansions, which improved considerably on the game and added a lot of contents, can be bought year by year.

The move is obviously meant to help Destiny 2 compete with other games-as-services, such as the constantly improving Warframe and youth-devouring Fortnite. And it’s a good test bed for the new cross-platform economy that gamers are beginning to demand. You’ll be able to test it out for yourself on September 17, when the switchover is set to take effect — more details should be available well ahead of the relaunch.

HTC had the hottest VR headset out of the gate in 2016, but the thinning margins on consumer hardware thanks to Oculus have pushed them into the enterprise business.

Today, the company released the Vive Pro Eye headset, its latest enterprise play that integrates eye-tracking camera to give users an additional input mode and a way for users to signal attention. It’s available in a bundle with SteamVR 2.0 base stations and Vive controllers for $1,599.

The only difference over the previous-generation Vive Pro (with a $1,399 bundle price) is the eye-tracking capabilities. The $200 premium for that feature seems a bit healthy, but I suppose you don’t need much of an excuse to charge enterprise users more.

As a consumer, there’s really no reason to buy this. Few titles are going to boost eye-tracking support until more consumer-grade headsets integrate the tech. It’s worth contrasting the price point here with other headsets like the Valve Index which is several hundred dollars less and then the Rift S which is $1,200 less.

Ahead of the 2020 elections former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos and his colleagues at Stanford University have unveiled a sweeping new plan to secure U.S. electoral infrastructure and combat foreign campaigns seeking to interfere in U.S. politics.

As the Mueller investigation into electoral interference made clear, foreign agents from Russia (and elsewhere) engaged in a strategic campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. elections. As the chief security officer of Facebook at the time, Stamos was both a witness to the influence campaign on social media and a key architect of the efforts to combat its spread.

Along with Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia, and a host of other academics from Stanford, Stamos lays out a multi-pronged plan that incorporates securing U.S. voting systems, providing clearer guidelines for advertising and the operations of foreign media in the U.S. and integrating government action more closely with media and social media organizations to combat the spread of misinformation or propaganda by foreign governments.

The paper lays out a number of suggestions for securing elections including:

• Increasing the Security of the U.S. Election Infrastructure
• Explicitly prohibit foreign governments and individuals from purchasing online advertisements targeting the American electorate
• Require greater disclosure measures for FARA-registered foreign media organizations.
• Create standardized guidelines for labeling content affiliated with disinformation campaign producers.
• Mandate transparency in the use of foreign consultants and foreign companies in U.S. political campaigns.
• Foreground free and fair elections as part of U.S. policy and identifying election rights as human rights
• Signal a clear and credible commitment to respond to election interference.

A lot of heavy lifting by Congress and media and social media companies would be required to enact all of these policy recommendations and many of them speak to core issues that policymakers and corporate executives are already attempting to manage.

For lawmakers that means drafting legislation that would require paper trails for all ballots and improve threat assessments of computerized election systems along with a complete overhaul of campaign laws related to advertising, financing, and press freedoms (for foreign press).

The Stanford proposals call for the strict regulation of foreign involvement in campaigns including a ban on foreign governments and individuals from buying online ads that would target the U.S. electorate with an eye toward influencing elections. The proposals also call for greater disclosure requirements indicating articles, opinion pieces or media produced by foreign media organizations. Furthermore, any campaign working with a foreign company or consultant or with significant foreign business interests should be required to disclose those connections.

Clearly, the echoes of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica and political advertising scandals can be heard in some of the suggestions made by the paper’s authors.

Indeed, the paper leans heavily on the use and abuse of social media and tech as a critical vector for an attack on future U.S. elections. And the Stanford proposals don’t shirk from calling on legislators to demand that these companies do more to protect their platforms from being used and abused by foreign governments or individuals.

In some cases companies are already working to enact suggestions from the report. Facebook, Alphabet, and Twitter have said that they will work together to coordinate and encourage the spread of best practices. Media companies need to create (and are working to create) norms for handling stolen information. Labeling manipulated videos or propaganda (or articles and videos that come from sources known to disseminate propaganda) is another task that platforms are undertaking, but an area where there is still significant work to be done (especially when it comes to deepfakes).

As the report’s author’s note:

Existing user interface features and platforms’ content delivery algorithms need to be utilized as much as possible to provide contextualization for questionable information and help users escape echo chambers. In addition, social media platforms should provide more transparency around users who are paid to promote certain content. One area ripe for innovation is the automatic labeling of synthetic content, such as videos created by a variety of techniques that are often lumped under the term “deepfakes”. While there are legitimate uses of synthetic media technologies, there is no legitimate need to mislead social media users about the authenticity of that media. Automatically labeling content, which shows technical signs of being modified in this manner, is the minimum level of due diligence required of the major video hosting sites.

There’s more work that needs to be done to limit the targeting capabilities for political advertising and improving transparency around paid and unpaid political content as well, according to the report.

And somewhat troubling is the report’s call for the removal of barriers around sharing information relating to disinformation campaigns that would include changes to privacy laws.

Here’s the argument from the report:

At the moment, access to the content used by disinformation actors is generally restricted to analysts who archived the content before it was removed or governments with lawful request capabilities. Few organizations have been able to analyze the full paid and unpaid content created by Russian groups in 2016, and the analysis we have is limited to data from the handful of companies who investigated the use of their platforms and were able to legally provide such data to Congressional committees. Congress was able to provide that content and metadata to external researchers, an action that is otherwise proscribed by U.S. and European law. Congress needs to establish a legal framework within which the metadata of disinformation actors can be shared in real-time between social media platforms, and removed disinformation content can be shared with academic researchers under reasonable privacy protections.

Ultimately, these suggestions are meaningless without real action from the Congress and the President to ensure the security of elections. As the events of 2016  — documented in the Mueller report — revealed there are a substantial number of holes in the safeguards erected to secure our elections. As the country looks for a place to build walls for security, perhaps one around election integrity would be a good place to start.

Lip-syncing jumpstarted TikTok’s rise to the center of teen culture, arguably displacing Instagram . Now the Facebook-owned app is striking back with a new feature that lets you displays lyrics on your video Story synced to a soundtrack you’ve added with the Music sticker. Lyrics could help creators and their fans sing along, and the visual flare could make the amateur MTV content more watchable.

Instagram scored a big endorsement from teen scare-pop phenomenon Billie Eilish who’s featured in the demo video for Story lyrics, which are now available in all the countries where Instagram Music has launched including the US, Germany, and France.

To play with the feature, first select the Music lens type (amidst Boomerang and other options) before you shoot or the Music sticker after. Once you pick a song, you’ll see lyrics pop up which can help you cue the segment of the music you want to play. Then you can cycle through a bunch of animation styles like traditional karaoke teleprompter, a typewriter version that preserves mystery by only revealing lyrics as they’re sung, and big flashy billboard font.

“Music can be a big part of expression on Instagram – between adding music to Stories, connecting with artists, sending song recs back-and-forth, there are lots of ways to connect with music on IG” an Instagram spokesperson tells me. “Now, we’re building on our music features and introducing the ability to add lyrics when you add a song to your story.” As with pretty much everything Instagram launches, it was first dug out of Android code and revealed to the world by frequent TechCrunch tipster and reverse engineering master Jane Manchun Wong. She first spotted Lyrics in March and we wrote about the prototype in April.

But TikTok isn’t waiting up. Today it launched its own text feature for adding overlaid captions to videos. Typically, creators had to use Snapcat, Instagram Stories, or desktop editing software to add text. Creators are sure to find plenty of hilarious use cases for text on TikTok, and it could help replace the common trope of writing captions on paper and holding them up during clips.

All of these features are about keeping social video from going stale. The manicured, painstakingly posed Instagram aesthetic is over, as The Atlantic’s Taylor Lorenz deftly identified. Fans are sick of perfection, which breeds envy and feels plastic or inauthentic. Comedy, absurdity, and the rough edges of reality are becoming the new ‘look’ of social media. Tools to overlay lyrics and text give creators more freedom to express complex jokes or just act silly. The popularity of Billie Eilish’s own dirtbag chic fashion and willingness to reveal her own insecurities exemplifies this shift, so it’s smart Instagra

Gatik AI, an autonomous vehicle startup that came out of stealth Thursday with $4.5 million in funding and Walmart as a customer, is aiming for the sweet middle spot in the world of logistics.

The company, which operates out of Palo Alto and Toronto, isn’t deploying autonomous delivery bots built for sidewalks, nor is it aiming for self-driving trucks, or even robotaxis to shuttle around people. Instead, the founders of Gatik AI are developing a business that will do short hauls of goods between businesses using autonomous light-commercial trucks and vans.

The Ford transit vehicles outfitted with Gatik’s self-driving system will drive up to 200 miles a day and stay within a city environment, co-founder and CEO Gautam Narang told TechCrunch. He believes the company can close the gap in the market through a variety of use cases, including partnering with third-party logistics giants like Amazon, FedEx or even the U.S. Postal Service, auto part distributors, consumer goods, food and beverage distributors as well as medical and pharmaceutical companies.

The strategy has attracted a number of investors and at least one major partner: Walmart. Gatik AI has raised $4.5 million in a seed round led by former CEO and executive chairman of Google Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. Other investors include AngelPad, Dynamo Fund, Fontinalis Partners, Trucks Venture Capital and angel Lior Ron, who heads Uber Freight.

Dror Berman, a founding partner at Innovation Endeavors, is now a Gatik board member.

“There is a huge gap between autonomous Class 8 big rig trucks, which can only operate on highways, and smaller automated vehicles such as sidewalk robots and Nuro vehicles, which are restricted by operation speed, capacity, distance, and the curb. Gatik fills the critical ‘middle mile’ part of logistics, which is only becoming more valuable as a layer in the $800 billion logistics ecosystem,” said Reilly Brennan, founding general partner at Trucks Venture Capital.

The capital will allow Gatik — the name means progressive or speed in Sanskrit —  to expand its team and launch additional commercial services this year.

Narang co-founded the company with his brother Arjun Narang, who is CTO, and chief engineer Apeksha Kumavat. The company has been testing its autonomous vehicle technology on public roads in California for about 18 months.

The trio, which previously founded rehabilitation robotics tech startup Maverick Robotics, contends that their autonomous vehicle technology and approach, if scaled, can reduce the cost of last-mile delivery for businesses by 50% and improve safety.

Walmart could be one such customer. Gatik didn’t provide many details about the deal with Walmart, only to say that it’s launching a service with Walmart in the coming weeks.

The U.S. retail giant has already shown it has a keen interest in autonomous vehicle technology. Last year, Walmart and self-driving vehicle company Waymo announced a partnership in Arizona. Under the test program, members of Waymo’s early rider program were offered grocery savings when they shop from Walmart.com. The riders will be able to take a Waymo car to their nearby Walmart store for grocery pickup when the order is ready.

Walmart also signed a deal in January with startup Udelv to test the use of autonomous vans to deliver online grocery orders to customers. Under the agreement, Udelv will provide its second-generation autonomous delivery van, called the Newton, to Walmart to deliver groceries in Surprise, Ariz.

Gautam Narang says third-party logistics companies are also a particularly good opportunity.

“There’s a huge push, where these companies are trying to build micro-fulfillment centers close to the customer,” Narang said. “So moving goods from a warehouse to these micro centers is one of the use cases that we’re targeting. This is perfect for scaling and commercialization of autonomous technology.”

Venture capitalist Mark Stevens has been banned from the rest of the NBA Finals after last night shoving Toronto Raptor’s player Kyle Lowry and hurling expletives at him after Lowry crashed into a row of seats. Notably, Stevens was not in the same row but rather can be seen on video rising from his chair behind the row to push the NBA star as he tried to regain his footing.

The episode is an embarrassment to the Warriors, as Stevens, a former Sequoia Capital partner who spent nearly 23 years with the firm and today manages his own money through a family office called S-Cubed Capital, is a minority owner of the team as well as an executive board member.

The Warriors issued a statement about the episode this morning, writing:

Mr. Stevens’ behavior last night did not reflect the high standards that we hope to exemplify as an organization. We’re extremely disappointed in his actions and, along with Mr. Stevens, offer our sincerest apology to Kyle Lowry and the Toronto Raptors organization for this unfortunate misconduct. There is no place for such interaction between fans — or anyone — and players at an NBA game.

Mr. Stevens will not be in attendance at any of the remaining games of the 2019 NBA Finals. Review of this matter is ongoing.

Meanwhile, a shaken Lowry said last night of Stevens, who had not yet been identified at the time: “The fans have a place; we love our fans. But fans like that shouldn’t be allowed to be in there, because it’s not right. I can’t do nothing to protect myself. But the league does a good job, and hopefully they ban him from all NBA games forever.”

Lowry hasn’t commented since the news broke that Stevens is the individual who shoved him.

Stevens was featured in March of this year on Forbes’s list of the world’s (then) 2,153 billionaires. Ranked at spot 962, Stevens is believed by the outlet to have amassed a fortune of $2.3 billion. He bought a stake in the Warriors’ franchise in 2013.

Twitter has taken a pair of shears to its user rules, shaving almost 2,000 words off of its T&Cs — with the stated aim of making it clearer for users what is not acceptable behaviour on its platform.

It says the rules have shrunk from 2,500 words to just 600 — with each of the reworded rules now encapsulated within a pithy tweet length (280 characters or less).

Though each tweet-length rule is still followed by plenty of supplementary detail — where Twitter explains the rationale behind it and provides examples of what not to do, and details of potential consequences. So the full rule-book is still way over 2,500 words.

“Everyone who uses Twitter should be able to easily understand what is and is not allowed on the service,” writes Twitter’s Del Harvey, VP of trust and safety, in a blog post announcing the changes. “As part of our continued push towards more transparency across every aspect of Twitter, we’re working to make sure every rule has its own help page with more detailed information and relevant resources, with abuse and harassment, hateful conduct, suicide or self-harm, and copyright being next on our list to update. Our focus remains on keeping everyone safe and supporting a healthier public conversation on Twitter.”

The newly reworded rules can be found at: twitter.com/rules

We’ve listed the tweet-sized rules below, without any of their qualifying clutter:

• You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people. We also prohibit the glorification of violence.
• You may not threaten or promote terrorism or violent extremism.
• We have zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation on Twitter.
• You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm.
• You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.
• You may not promote or encourage suicide or self-harm.
• You may not post media that is excessively gory or share violent or adult content within live video or in profile or header images. Media depicting sexual violence and/or assault is also not permitted.
• You may not use our service for any unlawful purpose or in furtherance of illegal activities. This includes selling, buying, or facilitating transactions in illegal goods or services, as well as certain types of regulated goods or services.
• You may not publish or post other people’s private information (such as home phone number and address) without their express authorization and permission. We also prohibit threatening to expose private information or incentivizing others to do so.
• You may not post or share intimate photos or videos of someone that were produced or distributed without their consent.
• You may not use Twitter’s services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter.
• You may not use Twitter’s services for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections. This includes posting or sharing content that may suppress voter turnout or mislead people about when, where, or how to vote.
• You may not impersonate individuals, groups, or organizations in a manner that is intended to or does mislead, confuse, or deceive others.
• You may not violate others’ intellectual property rights, including copyright and trademark.

Notably the rules make no mention of fascist ideologies being unwelcome on Twitter’s platform. Although a logical person might be forgiven for thinking such hateful stuff would naturally be prohibited — based on the core usage principles Twitter is stating here (such as a ban on threatening and/or promoting violence against groups of people including on the basis of their race, ethnicity and so on).

But for Twitter nazi-ism remains, uh, ‘complicated’.

The company recently told Vice it’s working with researchers to consider whether or not it should ban nazis. Which suggests its new ‘pithier’ rules are missing a few qualifying asterisks.

Here, we fixed one:

• You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people*. We also prohibit the glorification of violence**. *unless you’re a nazi **white supremacists totally get a pass while we mull the commercial implications of actually banning racist hate

Another abuse vector that continues to look like a blindspot in Twitter’s rule-book is sex.

While the company does include both ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity’ among the many categories it stipulates that users must not direct harassment, at or promote violence against, it does not offer the same shield based on a user’s sex. Which appears to have resulted in instances where Twitter has deemed tweets containing violent misogyny to not be in violation of its rules.

Last month a Twitter UK public policy rep told the parliamentary human rights committee, which had raised the issue of the violent sexist tweets, that it believed the inclusion of gender should be enough to protect against instances of violent misogyny, despite having demonstrably failed to do so in the selection of tweets the committee put to it.

We’ve asked Twitter about its continued decision not to prohibit harassment and threats of violence against users based on their sex, as well as its ongoing failure to ban nazis and will update this report with any response.

In addition to editing down the wording of its rules, Twitter says it has thematically organized them under three new categories — safety, privacy, and authenticity — to make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for.

Though it’s not quite as at-a-glance clear as that on the rules page — which also includes a general preamble; a note on wider content boundaries; a section dealing with spam and security; and an addendum on content visibility restrictions that Twitter may apply in cases where it suspects an account of abuses and is investigating.

But, as ever, algorithmically driven platforms are anything but simple.

Hideously wordy T&Cs have of course been a tech staple for years so it’s good to see Twitter paying greater attention to the acceptable conduct signals it gives users — and at least trying to boil down a clearer essence of what isn’t acceptable behavior, albeit tardily.

But, equally, refreshed wording of what’s unacceptable makes it plainer that Twitter retains stubborn blind-spots that allow its platform to be a conduct for targeted racial hatred.

Perhaps these blindspots are commercially motivated, in the case of far right ideologies. Or perhaps Twitter’s leadership is still so drunk on its own philosophical koolaid it really has fuzzed the lines between fascism and, er, humanity.

If that’s the case, no pithily written rules will save Twitter from itself.

Don’t forget, this is a company that has been promising to get a handle on its abuse problem for years. Including — just last year — making a grand stance about wanting to champion ‘conversational health‘.

Yet it still can’t screw its courage to the sticking place and say no nazis.

Twitter’s multi-year struggles to respond to baked in hate might be farcical at this point — if the human impacts of amplifying racial and ethnic hatred weren’t a tragedy for all concerned.

And had it found a moral compass when it was first being warned about the rising tide of amplified abuse, it’s entirely possible one of its most high profile users might not be a geopolitical mega-bully known to retweet fascist propaganda.

Chew on that, Jack.

Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. This week, TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos sat down with Scott Kupor, managing director at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to dig into his new book Secrets of Sand Hill Road, discuss his advice for new founders dealing with VCs and to pick his brain on the opportunities that excite him most today.

Scott gained inspiration for Secrets of Sand Hill Road after realizing he was hearing the same questions from different entrepreneurs over his decade in venture. The book acts as an updated guide on what VCs actually do, how they think and how founders should engage with them.

Scott offers Connie his take on why, despite the influx of available information on the venture world, founders still view VC as a black box. Connie and Scott go on to shed some light on the venture thought process, discussing how VCs evaluate new founders, new market opportunities, future round potential and how they think about investments that aren’t playing out as expected. 

“[Deciding on the right amount of money to raise] is one of the areas where I think people will rely on convention too much, rather than figuring out what makes sense for them. And what I mean by convention is, they say, “Hey, my friends down the street just raised a $7 million A round, so $7 million must be the right size for an A round.”

The way we try to help entrepreneurs think about it is think about the pitch that you’re going to give at the next round of financing. Let’s say you’re raising a Series A, imagine sitting here 18 or 24 months from now doing the Series B financing, what’s the story you’re going to want to be able to tell the investor then, as to what you accomplished over that last 18 to 24 months?

And then, almost work your way backwards to say, “If that’s the story that I want to tell, and we all agree that’s a compelling story where somebody will come in hopefully, and fund it at a valuation that’s higher to reflect the progress of the business, then let’s work our way back, and say “how do we de risk that?””

Connie and Scott also dive deeper into Andreessen Horowitz’ investing and post-investing structure, and what the future of the firm and its key investments may look like down the road.

For access to the full transcription and the call audio, and for the opportunity to participate in future conference calls, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free. 

Connie Loizos: Hi, everyone. It’s time to kick off today’s call with Scott Kupor, a managing partner at the venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and more recently, the author of the book, Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It. Thank you so much for making time for us today.

Scott, I’m still in the process of reading the book, but I have to say, much like your colleague, Ben Horowitz’s book, and this is really true, I’m really enjoying it.

Scott Kupor: Well, thank you.

Connie: It doesn’t really feel remotely like work, which I find to be true with the vast majority of business books.

Scott: Well, I appreciate that. I had great help from Ben [Horowitz] in terms of inspiration from his book. So I’m glad to hear that. Thank you very much.

Facebook is finally ready to reveal details about its cryptocurrency codenamed Libra. It’s currently scheduled for a June 18th release of a white paper explaining its cryptocurrency’s basics, according to a source who says multiple investors briefed on the project by Facebook were told that date.

Meanwhile, the company’s Head of Financial Services & Payment Partnerships for Northern Europe Laura McCracken told German magazine WirtschaftsWoche‘s Sebastian Kirsch that the white paper would debut June 18th, and that the cryptocurrency would indeed be pegged to a basket of currencies rather than a single one like the US dollar to prevent price fluctuations. Kirsch tells me “I met Laura at Money2020 Europe in Amsterdam on Tuesday” after she watched fellow Facebook payments exec Paulette Rowe’s talk. “She told me that she wasn’t involved in what David Marcus’ [Facebook Blockchain] team was doing. But that I’d have to wait until June 18^th when a whitepaper was supposed to be published to get more details.” She told him she thought the date was already a publicly known fact, which it wasn’t.

Then, yesterday TechCrunch received a request for a June 18th news embargo from one of the communications managers for Facebook’s blockchain team. The Information’s Alex Heath and Jon Victor also reported yesterday that Facebook’s cryptocurrency project would launch later this month.

Facebook declined to comment on any news regarding its cryptocurrency project. There is always a chance that the announcement date could fluctuate if snafus with partners or governments arise. One source says Facebook is targeting a 2020 formal launch of the cryptocurrency

The debut of Libra or whatever Facebook decides to call it could unlock a new era of commerce and payments for the social network. It could be used to offer low or no-fee payments between friends or remittance of earnings to familys from migrant workers abroad who are often gouged by money transfer services.

Sidestepping credit card transaction fees could also allow Facebook’s cryptocurrency to offer a cheaper way to pay merchants for traditional ecommerce, or facilitate microtransactions for a la carte news articles or tipping of content creators. And a better understanding of who buys what or which brands or popular could aid Facebook in ad measurement, ranking, and targeting to amplify its core business.

How Facebook’s cryptocurrency works

Here’s what we know about Facebook’s blockchain project:

Name: Facebook will likely use the Libra codename as the public facing name for its cryptocurrency, which The Information reports won’t be called GlobalCoin as the BBC had claimed. Facebook has registed a company called Libra Networks in Switzerland for financial services, Reuters reported. Libra could be a play on the word LIBOR, an abbreviation for the London Inter-bank Offered Rate that’s used as a benchmark interest rate for borrowing between banks. LIBOR is for banks, while Libra is meant to be for the people.

Token: The cryptocurrency will be a stablecoin — a token designed to have a stable price to prevent discrepancies and complications due to price fluctuations during a payment or negotiation process. Facebook has spoken with financial institutions regarding contributing capital to form a $1 billion basket of multiple international fiat currencies and low-risk securities that will serve as collateral to stabilize the price of the coin, The Information reports. Facebook is working with various countries to pre-approve the rollout of the stablecoin.

Usage: Facebook’s cryptocurrency will be transferrable with zero fees via Facebook products including Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook is working with merchants to accept the token as payment, and may offer sign-up bonuses. The Information also reports Facebook also wants to roll out physical devices for ATMs so users can exchange traditional assets for the cryptocurrency.

Team: Facebook’s blockchain project is overseen by former PayPal President and VP of Facebook Messenger David Marcus. His team includes former Instagram VP of product Kevin Weil, Facebook’s former corporate head of treasury operations Sunita Parasuraman who The Information reports will oversee the token’s treasury, and many elite engineers cherrypicked from Facebook’s ranks. They’ve been working in a dedicated part of Facebook’s headquarters off-limits to other employees to boost secrecy, though the nature of the partnerships needed for launch have led to many leaks.

Governance: Facebook is in talks to create an independent foundation to oversee its cryptocurrency, The Information reports. It’s asking companies to pay $10 million to operate a node that can validate transactions made with its cryptocurrency in exchange for a say in governance of the token. It’s possible that node operators could benefit financially too. By introducing a level of decentralization to the governance of the project, Facebook may be able to avoid regulation related to it holding too much power over a global currency.

Postmates has hired Apple veteran and author Ken Kocienda as a principal software engineer leading Postmates X, the team building the food delivery company’s semi-autonomous sidewalk rover, Serve.

Kocienda, author of “Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs,” spent 15 years at Apple focused on human interface design, collaborating with engineers to develop the first iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Kocienda left Apple in 2017 to focus on his book.

Now, he’s picked Postmates as his next project, citing the team’s spirit and energy as motivation for joining.

“My goal throughout my career has not been technology for the sake of opportunity, I am interested in making product experiences that people out in the world will find useful and meaningful,” Kocienda tells TechCrunch. “It’s not about the technology or just the design, it’s about the technology and design coming together.”

Postmates unveiled Serve, their human-like delivery robot, in December. The semi-autonomous rover uses cameras and lidar to navigate sidewalks and can carry 50 pounds for up to 25 miles after one charge. To ensure safety, the team has a human pilot remotely monitoring the Serve fleets, and each rover has a “Help” button, touchscreen and video chat display for customers or passers-by to use if necessary. The company said they had planned to roll out the bots in 2019, though no pilots have been officially announced yet.

Kocienda said he is working on a variety of tasks within the Postmates X team. Just yesterday, he was focused on creating more expressions for the robot.

“We are spending a lot of time going in and refining and inventing new ways that Serve can communicate,” he said. “It’s not like we are a robotics startup. We have a business rolling, so part of what is interesting to me is that we can mine the data we have and use the intelligence we have to improve the [Serve] experience end-to-end.”

The purpose of Postmates’ incoming fleet of semi-autonomous rovers is not to eliminate the role of human drivers but to make their routes more efficient. If, say, a Postmates customer orders food from a nearby restaurant, Serve could pick up the food, potentially even get back into a car with a human driver, then get back out of the car to complete the last-mile delivery. This saves the driver from sitting in traffic and gets the customer their food much faster, ideally.

One questions how humans might respond to these rovers, however, if they are roaming the streets independently. To protect them from damage or defacement, Postmates is making them as human-like as possible, complete with a set of “eyes.”

“We want to make it socially intelligent,” Kocienda explained. “We want people, when they see Serve going down the street, to smile at it and to be happy to see it there … It’s going to have this halo effect for Postmates. It’s going to be a brand ambassador for Postmates.”

Postmates, headquartered in San Francisco, is expected to go public later this year. Most recently, the company lined up a $100 million pre-IPO financing that valued the business at $1.85 billion. Postmates is backed by Tiger Global, BlackRock, Spark Capital, Uncork Capital, Founders Fund, Slow Ventures and others.