Year: 2019

Redpoint Ventures is doubling down on China. The firm, headquartered in Menlo Park, has filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $400 million across two new China-focused funds.

The firm has set a $300 million target for its second flagship China fund, a significant increase from the $180 million it garnered for its debut China fund in 2016. Redpoint is also raising a $100 million opportunity fund that will also focus on the Chinese tech startup market.

Redpoint launched its dedicated China fund, led by managing director David Yuan and partners Tony Wu and Reggie Zhang, in 2016. Wu isn’t listed on the latest filings and may have taken a step back from the China team. We’ve reached out to Redpoint for additional details.

Investing at the seed, early- and growth-stages, Redpoint’s portfolio includes Stripe, Snowflake and Brandless. Its China fund has deployed capital to Yixia, a video blogging platform valued at more than $3 billion; Renrenche.com, an online marketplace for used cars; and iDreamSky, a Chinese game distributor that recently debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Following a banner year for venture capital fundraising wherein firms brought in $55.5 billion across 256 vehicles, per PitchBook, VCs are already off to a strong start in 2019. This week, Resolute Ventures, an early-stage firm based in San Francisco and Boston, closed its fourth fund on $75 million, and Silicon Valley-based BlueRun Ventures nabbed $130 million for its sixth flagship fund. Earlier this month, Lightspeed Venture Partners announced $560 million in capital commitments for its fourth China fund.

Amazon shareholders are demanding the company stop selling Rekognition, the company’s facial recognition software, to law enforcement. Unless the board of directors determines the technology “does not cause or contribute to actual or potential violations of civil and human rights,” shareholders want Amazon to stop selling the software to government agencies.

Rekognition, which is part of Amazon Web Services, has the ability to conduct image and video analyses of faces. The technology can identify and track people, as well as their emotions. Amazon has reportedly sold Rekognition to law enforcement agencies in at least two states. Amazon has also reportedly pitched this software to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last May, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California shed some light on Rekognition, saying it had obtained documents that raise “profound civil liberties and civil rights concerns.” In one test, the ACLU found Rekognition wrongly identified 28 members of Congress, disproportionately confusing Congress members of color as people criminals.

This resolution, organized by non-profit organization Open MIC, represents a group of shareholders that represent a total of $1.32 billion in assets under management.

“It’s a familiar pattern: a leading tech company marketing what is hailed as breakthrough technology without understanding or assessing the many real and potential harms of that product,” Open MIC Executive Director Michael Connor wrote in a blog post. “Sales of Rekognition to government represent considerable risk for the company and investors. That’s why it’s imperative those sales be halted immediately.”

Shareholders intend for this resolution to be voted on in Amazon’s annual meeting this spring. TechCrunch has reached out to Amazon and will update this story if we hear back.

The President has announced that the Defense Department will pursue a space-based missile defense system reminiscent of the one proposed by Reagan in 1983. As with Reagan’s ultimately abortive effort, the technology doesn’t actually exist yet and may not for years to come — but it certainly holds more promise now than 30 years ago.

In a speech at the Pentagon reported by the Associated Press, Trump explained that a new missile defense system would “detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States anywhere, any time, any place.”

“My upcoming budget will invest in a space-based missile defense layer. It’s new technology. It’s ultimately going to be a very, very big part of our defense, and obviously our offense,” he said. The nature of this “new technology” is not entirely clear, as none was named or ordered to be tested or deployed.

Lest anyone think that this is merely one of the President’s flights of fancy, he is in fact simply voicing the conclusions of the Defense Department’s 2019 Missile Defense Review, a major report that examines the state of the missile threat against the U.S. and what countermeasures might be taken.

It reads in part:

As rogue state missile arsenals develop, space will play a particularly important role in support of missile defense.

Russia and China are developing advanced cruise missiles and hypersonic missile capabilities that can travel at exceptional speeds with unpredictable flight paths that challenge existing defensive systems.

The exploitation of space provides a missile defense posture that is more effective, resilient and adaptable to known and unanticipated threats… DoD will undertake a new and near-term examination of the concepts and technology for space-based defenses to assess the technological and operational potential of space-basing in the evolving security environment.

The President’s contribution seems to largely have been to eliminate the mention of the nation-states directly referenced (and independently assessed at length) in the report, and to suggest the technology is ready to deploy. In fact all the Pentagon is ready to do is begin research into the feasibility of the such a system or systems.

No doubt space-based sensors are well on their way; we already have near-constant imaging of the globe (companies like Planet have made it their mission), and the number and capabilities of such satellites are only increasing.

Space-based tech has evolved considerably over the many years since the much-derided “Star Wars” proposals, but some of them are still as unrealistic as they were then. However as the Pentagon report points out, the only way to know for sure is to conduct a serious study of the possibilities, and that’s what this plan calls for. All the same it may be best for Trump not to repeat Reagan’s mistake of making promises he can’t keep.

Dolby is secretly building a mobile music production app it hopes will seduce SoundCloud rappers and other musicians. Codenamed “234” and formerly tested under the name Dolby Live, the free app measures background noise before you record and then nullifies it. Users can also buy “packs” of audio effects to augment their sounds with EQs settings like “Amped, Bright, Lyric, Thump, Deep, or Natural”. Recordings can then be exported, shared to Dolby’s own audio social network, or uploaded directly to SoundCloud through a built-in integration.

You could call it VSCO or Instagram for SoundCloud.

234 is Dolby Labs’ first big entrance into the world of social apps that could give it more face time with consumers than its core business of integrating audio technology into devices by other manufacturers. Using 234 to convince musicians that Dolby is an expert at audio quality could get them buying more of those speakers and headphones. And by selling audio effect packs, the app could earn the company money directly while making the world of mobile music sound better.

Dolby has been covertly testing Dolby Live/234 since at least June. A source tipped us off to the app and while the company hasn’t formally announced it, there is a website for signing up to test Dolby 234. Dolby PR refused to comment on the forthcoming app. But 234’s sign-up site advertises it saying “How can music recorded on a phone sound so good? Dolby 234 automatically cleans up the sound, gives it tone and space, and finds the ideal loudness. it’s like having your own producer in your phone.”

Those with access to the Dolby 234 app can quickly record audio or audio/video clips with optional background noise cancelling. Free sound editing tools including trimming, loudness boost, and bass and treble controls. Users can get a seven-day free trial of the Dolby’s “Essentials” pack of EQ presets like ‘Bright’ before having to pay, though the pack was free in the beta version so we’re not sure how much it will cost. The “Tracks” tab lets you edit or share any of the clips you’ve recorded.

Overall, the app is polished and intuitive with a lively feel thanks to the Instagram logo-style purple/orange gradient color scheme. The audio effects have a powerful impact on the sound without being gimmicky or overbearing. There’s plenty of room for additional features, though, like multi-tracking, a metronome, or built-in drum beats.

For musicians posting mobile clips to Instagram or other social apps, 234 could make them sound way better without much work. There’s also a huge opportunity for Dolby to court podcasters and other non-music audio creators. I’d love a way to turn effects on and off mid-recording so I could add the feeling of an intimate whisper or echoey ampitheater to emphasize certain words or phrases.

Given how different 234 is from Dolby’s traditional back-end sound processing technologies, it’s done a solid job with design and the app could still get more bells and whistles before an official launch. It’s a creative move for the brand and one that recognizes the seismic shifts facing audio production and distribution. As always-in earbuds like Apple’s AirPods and voice interfaces like Alexa proliferate, short-form audio content will become more accessible and popular. Dolby could spare the world from having to suffer through amazing creators muffled by crappy recordings.

NPR is turning its popular game show program “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” into a voice application for smart speakers, including both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant-powered devices. The new app lets listeners play along at home by answering the fill-in-the-blank questions from this week’s news – just like the players do on the NPR podcast and radio show, that’s today aired on more than 720 NPR Member stations.

Also like the NPR program, the new smart speaker game includes the voice talent of the comedy quiz show’s hosts, Peter Sagal and Bill Kurtis.

To get started, you just say either “Alexa, open Wait Wait Quiz” or “Hey Google, talk to the Wait Wait Quiz,” depending on your device.

After hearing the question, you can then speak – or shout – your answer at your smart speaker to find out if you got it right.

The game is five minutes long and updated every week, NPR says.

In addition to bragging rights around your home if you win, game players get to compete for an offbeat prize – the chance to have the show’s talent personalize their voicemail, as well as hear their name announced on the air.

The new game was developed in collaboration with VaynerMedia’s internet-of-things-division, VaynerSmart, NPR notes.

It’s not NPR’s first foray into the smart speaker market, but it is its first game.

To date, NPR’s other voice apps have included news briefings, like Up First, News Now, and Story of the Day (plus its variations like World Story of the Day; Business Story of the Day). NPR also offers a live radio app and its NPR One app, as well as dedicated apps for its Planet Money program.

NPR’s continual expansion into smart speakers has to do with the growing popularity of these devices. Its own Smart Audio Report says that 53 million people (or 21% of the adult population) now own one of these devices, and it wants its content there to reach them.

 

 

The reception to Facebook Portal has been, at best, a mixed bag. Between the company’s ongoing privacy woes and a lackluster response, Facebook likely didn’t get the response it was anticipating for its first in-house hardware creation. Still, both the Portal and Portal Plus are floating around the four-star mark over on Amazon. Not too shabby.

New York Times columnist Kevin Roose noticed something fishy in all of this, noting on Twitter that many of the verified reviewers on the site bore the same names as Facebook employees. “Reviewing your employer’s products is definitely against Amazon’s rules,” he wrote today. “It’s also not exactly an indicator of confidence in how well they’re selling organically!”

Facebook’s AR/VR VP Andrew Bosworth was quick to respond, tweeting, “[N]either coordinated nor directed from the company. From an internal post at the launch: ‘We, unequivocally, DO NOT want Facebook employees to engage in leaving reviews for the products that we sell to Amazon.’ We will ask them to take down.”

This is just the latest controversy in the product’s short life. At launch, Bosworth felt it necessary to clarify concerns about whether Facebook was using the product to listen to calls and collect data. And while apparently not a calculated effort on Facebook’s part, it does leave one wondering about internal fallout surrounding the product’s negative response.

Slack is losing its chief product officer April Underwood ahead of a direct listing expected in 2019. Tamar Yehoshua, a long-time Google vice president, has been tapped to fill Underwood’s shoes as Slack’s new product chief.

Underwood joined Slack, the provider of workplace communication tools, in 2015 as its head of platform after a five-year stint as Twitter’s director of product. She was promoted to the chief product role about 10 months ago. Underwood is also a founding partner of #Angels, an investment collective that pushes to get more women on startup cap tables.

In a Medium post announcing her departure from Slack, Underwood said she planned to focus on investing full time.

“One common story you hear when you talk to founders is that their idea ran as a background process for many years until it moved into the foreground and became a calling too loud to ignore,” Underwood wrote. “And now, I can truly empathize with founders — because that’s happened for me. Investing, which started as a side hustle for me and my #Angels partners, has emerged as the pursuit too inspiring and energizing to be relegated to my spare time.”

During her tenure, Underwood had a hand in crafting Slack’s investment fund — a pool of capital supported by Accel, Index Ventures, KPCB, Social Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital that has invested in 49 projects building on top of Slack to date.

Slack, led by founder and chief executive officer Stewart Butterfield, is said to be preparing for a direct listing, meaning it will go public without listing any new shares, with no lockup period and no intermediary bankers. Valued at roughly $7 billion, Slack has raised more than $1 billion to date from GV, IVP, T. Rowe Price, SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins, Accel and others.

Twitter accidentally revealed some users’ “protected” (aka, private) tweets, the company disclosed this afternoon. The “Protect your Tweets” setting typically allows people to use Twitter in a non-public fashion. These users get to approve who can follow them and who can view their content. For some Android users over a period of several years, that may not have been the case – their tweets were actually made public as a result  of this bug.

The company says that the issue impacted Twitter for Android users who made certain account changes while the “Protect your Tweets” option was turned on.

For example, if the user had changed their account email address, the “Protect your Tweets” setting was disabled.

Twitter tells TechCrunch that’s just one example of an account change that could have prompted the issue. We asked for other examples, but the company declined share any specifics.

What’s fairly shocking is how long this issue has been happening.

Twitter says that users may have been impacted by the problem if they made these accounts changes between November 3, 2014, and January 14, 2019 – the day the bug was fixed. 

The company has now informed those who were affected by the issue, and has re-enabled the “Protect your Tweets” setting if it had been disabled on those accounts. But Twitter says it’s making a public announcement because it “can’t confirm every account that may have been impacted.” (!!!)

The company explains to us it was only able to notify those people where it was able to confirm the account was impacted, but says it doesn’t have a complete list of impacted accounts. For that reason, it’s unable to offer an estimate of how many Twitter for Android users were affected in total.

This is a sizable mistake on Twitter’s part, as it essentially made content that users had explicitly indicated they wanted private available to the public. It’s unclear at this time if the issue will result in a GDPR violation and fine, as a result.

The one bright spot is that some of the impacted users may have noticed their account had become public because they would have received alerts – like notifications that people were following them without their direct consent. That could have prompted the user to re-enable the “protect tweets” setting on their own. But they may have chalked up the issue to user error or a small glitch, not realizing it was a system-wide bug.

“We recognize and appreciate the trust you place in us, and are committed to earning that trust every day,” wrote Twitter in a statement. “We’re very sorry this happened and we’re conducting a full review to help prevent this from happening again.”

The company says it believes the issue is now fully resolved.

We like to think of ourselves as nerds here at TechCrunch, which is why we’re bring you this.

During the government shutdown, security experts noticed several federal websites were throwing back browser errors because the TLS certificate, which lights up your browser with “HTTPS” or flashes a padlock, on many domains had expired. And because so many federal workers have been sent home on unpaid leave — or worse, working without pay but trying to fill in for most of their furloughed department — expired certificates aren’t getting renewed. Renewing certificates doesn’t take much time or effort — sometimes just a click of a mouse. But some do cost money, and during a government shutdown there isn’t any.

Depending on the security level, most websites will kick back browser errors. Some won’t let you in at all until the expired certificate is renewed.

We got thinking: how many of the major departments and agencies are at risk? We looked at the list of government domains (not including subdomains) from 18F, the government’s digital services unit, which updated the list just before the shutdown. Then we filtered out all the state domains, leaving just the domains of all federal agencies and the executive branch. We put all of those domains through a Python script that pulls information from the TLS certificate of each domain and returns its expiry value. Running that for a few hours in a bash script, we returned with a few thousand results.

In other words, we poked every certificate to see if it had expired — and, if not, when it would stop working.

Why does it matter? Above all else, it’s an inconvenience. Depending on how long this shutdown lasts, it won’t take long before some of the big federal sites might start throwing errors and locking users out. That could also affect third-party sites and apps that rely on those federal sites for data, such as through a developer API.

Security, however, is less of a factor, despite claims to the contrary. Eric Mill, a security expert who recently left 18F, the government’s digital agency, said that fears over expired certificates have been overblown.

“The security risk to users is actually very low, since trusting a recently expired cert doesn’t in and of itself allow traffic to be intercepted,” he said in a recent tweet. Mill also noted that there’s little automation across the agencies, leading to certificates expiring and eventual downtime — especially when sites and departments are understaffed, especially given that each federal agency and department is responsible for their own website.

There’s a silver lining. Any website that’s hosted on cloud.gov, search.gov or federalist.18f.gov won’t go down as they rely on Let’s Encrypt certificates that automatically renew every three months.

We’ve compiled the following list of domains that have and will expire during the period of the shutdown, from December 22 onwards — while removing dead links and defunct domains that no longer load. Some domains redirect to other domains that might have a certificate that expires next year, but the first domain will still fail on its expiry date.

Remember, if you see a domain that’s working past its expiry, check the certificate and it’s likely been renewed. If you see any errors, feel free to drop me an email.

In all, we’ve counted five expired federal domains already, 13 domains will expire by the end of the month, and another 58 domains that’ll expire by the end of February.

Expired:

• disasterhousing.gov — December 28
• landimaging.gov — January 3
• earthsystemprediction.gov — January 11 — the National Earth System Prediction Capability
• manufacturing.gov — January 14 — a portal highlighting national manufacturing initiatives.
• nationalhousinglocator.gov — January 16

Expiring in January:

• scidac.gov — January 23
• ginniemae.gov — January 23
• reportband.gov — January 23
• mojavedata.gov — January 26
• congressionaldirectory.gov — January 30 — a redirect to the directory of Congress
• congressionalrecord.gov — January 30 — another redirect to the congressional record
• fdsys.gov — January 30
• housecalendar.gov — January 30 — a redirect pointing hosting the House calendar
• presidentialdocuments.gov — January 30 — Compilation of Presidential Documents
• senatecalendar.gov — January 30 — a redirect to the Senate calendar
• uscode.gov — January 30
• donaciondeorganos.gov — January 30
• www.fishwatch.gov — January 30

Federal domains that will expire by mid-February

• ferc.gov — February 1 — Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• askkaren.gov — February 1
• befoodsafe.gov — February 1 — a redirecting link to the Department of Agriculture
• foodsafetyjobs.gov — February 1
• isitdoneyet.gov — February 1
• pregunteleakaren.gov — February 1
• www.democraticleader.gov — February 2 — website of the House majority leader
• majorityleader.gov — February 2 — redirecting link to the House majority’s page
• www.democraticwhip.gov — February 2 — website of the Congressional Democratic whip
• majoritywhip.gov — February 2 — redirecting link to Democratic whip’s page
• llnl.gov — February 2 — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• moneyfactory.gov — February 6
• federalregister.gov — February 7 — the Federal Register
• wlci.gov — February 7
• fedrooms.gov — February 10
• floodsmart.gov — February 10 — the National Flood Insurance Program
• www.casl.gov — February 11
• geoplatform.gov — February 12 — the U.S. Geospatial Platform
• fatherhood.gov — February 13
• eeoc.gov — February 13 — the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
• www.faa.gov — February 13 — the Federal Aviation Administration
• grants.gov — February 15
• indianaffairs.gov — February 15 — Department of the Interior’s Indian Affairs bureau
• jusfc.gov — February 15

Federal domains that will expire by the end of February

• citizenscience.gov — February 16
• bia.gov — February 18 — another think to Indian Affairs
• presidentialinnovationfellows.gov — February 18
• usich.gov — February 18
• cdfifund.gov — February 18
• home.treasury.gov — February 18 — the end domain to the U.S. Treasury homepage
• financialstability.gov — February 18
• fsoc.gov — February 18
• irsauctions.gov — February 18
• irssales.gov — February 18
• makinghomeaffordable.gov — February 18
• mha.gov — February 18
• sigtarp.gov — February 18
• treas.gov — February 18
• ustreas.gov — February 18 — a redirect to the U.S. Treasury
• capnhq.gov — February 19 — another redirect link to the U.S. Treasury
• fdicseguro.gov — February 19
• sftool.gov — February 21
• nlm.gov — February 21 — the National Library of Medicine
• bea.gov — February 22
• opioids.gov — February 22 — the White House’s page on the opioids epidemic
• jamesmadison.gov — February 24
• usitc.gov — February 24 — the U.S. International Trade Commission
• arctic.gov — February 25
• inspire2serve.gov — February 26
• usaspending.gov — February 26
• everykidinapark.gov — February 26
• sec.gov — February 26 — the Securities and Exchange Commission
• everytrycounts.gov — February 27
• abandonedmines.gov — February 27
• malwareinvestigator.gov — February 28 — the FBI’s malware analysis site
• va.gov — February 28 — Department of Veterans Affairs
• code.gov — February 28 — Code.gov for Sharing America’s Code

All information was accurate as of January 17.

Rumors about a Pixel Watch have abounded for years. Such a device would certainly make sense as Google attempts to prove the viability of its struggling wearable operating system, Wear OS. Seems the company is finally getting serious about the prospect. Today Fossil announced plans to sell its smartwatch IP to the software giant for for $40 million.

Sounds like Google will be getting a nice head start here as well. The deal pertains to “a smartwatch technology currently under development” and involves the transfer of a number of Fossil employees to team Google.

“Wearables, built for wellness, simplicity, personalization and helpfulness, have the opportunity to improve lives by bringing users the information and insights they need quickly, at a glance,” Wear OS VP Stacey Burr said in a statement. “The addition of Fossil Group’s technology and team to Google demonstrates our commitment to the wearables industry by enabling a diverse portfolio of smartwatches and supporting the ever-evolving needs of the vitality-seeking, on-the-go consumer.”

Like the Pixel before it, a Google -created smartwatch could ultimately serve as a proving group for the company’s open operating system. Wearables in general have struggled recently, and Wear OS is certainly not an exception. A rebrand and redesign haven’t done much to shake loose the cobwebs. In fact, Fossil has remained a rare constant, developing reasonably priced, fitness-focused products sporting the software.

The smartwatch category continues to be dominated by Apple’s offerings, and top competitors Fitbit and Samsung have opted to go different routes, supporting the Pebble-based Fitbit OS and Tizen, respectively. All of this has left Google struggling to differentiate itself and its partners’ offerings. Fossil’s team certainly has the know how to build solid watch hardware, so this could prove a solid match.

Fossil is quick to note, of course, that it’s still got a team of 200 working on R&D, and while the company is no doubt losing some quality employees, it’s still committed to wearable tech.

“Fossil Group has experienced significant success in its wearables business by focusing on product design and development informed by our strong understanding of consumers’ needs and style preferences,” Fossil EVP Greg McKelvey said in a statement. “We’ve built and advanced a technology that has the potential to improve upon our existing platform of smartwatches. Together with Google, our innovation partner, we’ll continue to unlock growth in wearables.”

From the outside, at least, this looks to be a similar (albeit much smaller scale) deal to the one Google struck with HTC to help bolster its smartphone offerings.