Year: 2019

Companies impatient to make drone deliveries a viable reality should have a win to celebrate soon. On Monday, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao announced in a “sneak preview” that her department would move forward with plans to remove waiver requirements for two key drone operation circumstances: flying after dark and flying over populated areas.

“First, at long last, the Department is ready to issue for comment a proposed new rule that would allow drones to fly overnight and over people without waivers, if certain conditions are met,” Chao said.

Those conditions include the stipulation that the drone operator has received special night flying testing and training and that the drone be outfitted with lighting designed to prevent collisions visible for “at least 3 statute miles.”

According to the FAA report that accompanied the remarks (embedded below), requests to operate at night are “by far” the FAA’s most common waiver request. The agency notes that “to date, the FAA has not received any reports of small UAS accidents operating under a night waiver.”

The second major change would allow drones to fly over people without a waiver if certain conditions are met. Those conditions are designed to minimize risk to anyone on the ground, including restrictions limiting device weight to .55 pounds. Drones over .55 pounds would be similarly allowed to operate over people if they meet a set of requirements to prevent serious injury, including the absence of “exposed rotating parts that could lacerate human skin.” This requirement is mostly open to interpretation — rather than stipulating specific build necessities, the FAA would allow drone makers to get creative so that a collision would be less severe than a particular injury threshold.

“The possibilities for designing an unmanned aircraft to meet this standard are too vast to create an exhaustive list,” the FAA report states. “By providing flexibility through performance-based requirements, the FAA enables the ingenuity of the industry to come up with ideas not yet even considered.”

The proposal will soon be published in the federal register where it will enter a 60 day open comment period. The full draft document is embedded below.

Tesla is handing over its new Model 3 sedan to Pwn2Own this year, the first time a car has been included in the annual high-profile hacking contest.

The prize for the winning security researcher: a Model 3.

Pwn2Own, which is in its 12th year and run by Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, is known as one of the industry’s toughest hacking contests. ZDI has awarded more than $4 million over the lifetime of the program.

Pwn2Own’s spring vulnerability research competition, Pwn2Own Vancouver, will be held in March 20 to 22 and will feature five categories, including web browsers, virtualization software, enterprise applications, server-side software, and the new automotive category. The targets, chosen by ZDI, include software products from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Oracle, and VMware. And, of course, Tesla . Pwn2Own is run in conjunction with the CanSec West conference.

Tesla has had a public relationship with the hacker community since 2014 when the company launched its first bug bounty program. And it’s grown and evolved ever since.

Last year, the company increased the maximum reward payment from $10,000 to $15,000 and added its energy products as well. Today, Tesla’s vehicles and all directly hosted servers, services and applications, are now in scope in its bounty program.

The company also made an important overhaul last year to its bug bounty program to support “safe harbor” by allowing car owners to hack their own cars as long as they stick to the rules. Tesla’s product security policy now says that if, through “good-faith security research” you brick your car, the company will reflash the software over-the-air or at a service center. The company says it won’t void the warranty on their car if they hack its software either.

There’s a reason why Tesla (and now other automakers) have launched bug bounty programs. Tesla vehicles are software centric and in many ways changed the industry by enabling over the air software updates that can fix glitches and security problems as well as improve performance and add other new features. It’s what has allowed Tesla to win over consumers with the idea that their vehicle will get better over time.

But with that comes possible security issues. Since 2014, the program has led Tesla to release a number of security improvements including cryptographic validation of its software, more robust cryptography for its key fobs, and the launch of PIN-to-Drive, which aims to prevent against relay attacks on keyfob cloning.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that hackers at Pwn2Own Vancouver will find any vulnerabilities. TechCrunch was told by a Trend Micro spokesperson that the percentage of successful attempts varies, but it’s usually around 50% of available targets.

It’s also unclear if researchers will enter the automotive category since it’s new this year, the spokesperson said, adding that she hopes people enter “as we would love to see what the state of the art in automotive research really is.”

Last year, Dish-owned streaming service Sling TV launched a free tier to its service designed to attract those with lapsed subscriptions to come back and watch. On Roku devices, former customers were able to tune into more than 100 hours of TV shows and movies without a subscription by launching the Sling TV app. Today, the service is extending a similar offer to newcomers. On Roku devices, those who have never signed up for the streaming TV service will have the chance to browse and watch free shows, without the need for a subscription.

In other words, this is not a “free trial,” it’s a free — if limited — selection of content.

To access the free tier, newcomers can click “Browse as Guest” in order to then browse and watch from content in the “My TV” section of the app. This section includes TV shows like “Shameless,” “The Big Interview with Dan Rather,” “Heartland” and others. Users can also browse more than 5,000 movies that can be watched if they choose to subscribe.

Sling TV is targeting Roku because it’s one of the most well-adopted media player platforms in the U.S., which makes it a prime target for a user acquisition strategy like this.

Having a functioning app instead of a static landing page may prompt users to subscribe to the base subscription, and it may also prompt sign-ups for Sling TV’s newer à la carte channels.

At the same time last year when the company announced its free tier for lapsed subscribers, it also launched à la carte programming as a way to differentiate itself from other live TV services. Unlike Hulu with Live TV or YouTube TV, this feature allows Sling TV users to buy access to standalone paid channels, without needing to subscribe to a TV package — like how Amazon Prime Video Channels works.

As a result, Sling TV can today serve as a place to watch paid channels like Showtime, CuriosityStream, NBA League Pass, Docurama, Stingray Karaoke and others.

Newcomers on this free tier can also rent PPV events without a subscription, the company says.

Free programming today is being used as a lure to attract customers to various platforms in the streaming video market and beyond. Amazon offers to Prime subscribers a ton of free video, including originals, and just last week launched a new ad-supported streaming service from IMDb. Roku offers free content on The Roku Channel, and Plex recently said it will venture into this area in 2019, as well.

Alongside the launch of the free programming, Sling TV is rolling out an improved search experience, which now shows “popular searches,” and a new binge-watching feature.

The latter will prompt users to watch the next episode in an on-demand or recorded series after they’ve completed the current episode, and will auto-play it if no action is taken in 10 seconds.

The new free tier is initially rolling out to Roku users, starting today, but will come to other devices in the future.

The updated Search option is live now on Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku devices. And the binge-watching feature is first coming to Roku devices in the weeks ahead, with support for others also arriving in the future.

The company behind a texting platform that powered more than 1,300 Democratic campaigns has slashed its staff in the lull following the 2018 midterms. Hustle co-founder and CEO Roddy Lindsay, a former Facebook engineer, disclosed the layoffs in a recent Medium post, apologizing for the choices that led up to the decision to “right-size” Hustle’s team.

“… While we have an exciting set of initial commercial customers using Hustle successfully, it was premature to aggressively expand our team — we need the time to do the research with our customers and build the right product to support industries beyond politics and non-profits,” Lindsay wrote in the layoff announcement. “I made the rookie misstep of not watching our growth closely enough, and we ended up overbuilding our team beyond our means.”

Bloomberg reports that Hustle’s aggressive layoffs reduced its team by 35 percent. TechCrunch has reached out to Hustle to confirm those numbers.

It sounds like Hustle scaled up considerably in the lead-up to midterms, undertaking “an enormous operational challenge” that ultimately could not be sustained after the political cycle died down. The company’s booming success and its post-race contraction serve as a cautionary tale for startups that hitch their wagon to the inherently boom and bust nature of political campaigning. To correct course, Hustle has brought in “strong finance leadership” and plans to chart a fiscally realistic path forward.

Hustle’s platform allows clients to mobilize and optimize texting campaigns that eschew mass texting templates. Within Hustle’s system, designated point people can manage and personalize texting campaigns, tracking progress in the platform as they go. A number of Democratic and progressive campaigns have leveraged Hustle for their causes, most notably the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016. Notably, Hustle exclusively opens its platform to causes on the political left.

Last May, Hustle raised a $30 million Series B, led by Insight Venture Partners. Less than a year prior, the company picked up $8 million for its Series A. A small team of 17 people in early 2017, Hustle had swelled to more than 100 by May of 2018.

Lindsay asserts that the decision should make Hustle more financially sustainable and poised for “long-term impact.” In the blog post, he notes that Hustle will zero in on its non-profit client core moving forward.

“There aren’t many companies who have been able to pair business success and positive political and civic impact in the world,” Lindsay wrote. “In 2018, we discovered why: it’s really, really difficult.”

Nissan unveiled Monday its latest vision for electric vehicles at the North American International Auto Show — the third consecutive year the automaker has teased what its EV future might look like.

This time it’s a sleek EV concept called the Nissan IMs, which the automaker describes as an “elevated sports sedan.” If the IMs name sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The name ties in with Nissan Intelligent Mobility (IM, get it) the branding that it uses for its automated technology and electric vehicles.

“Fully embracing the three pillars of Nissan Intelligent Mobility – Intelligent Driving, Intelligent Power and Intelligent Integration – the IMs concept moves toward the creation of a sustainable mobile society in the form of EVs, autonomous drive and connectivity technologies,” said Denis Le Vot, senior vice president, chairman of Management Committee, Nissan North America.

To be clear, the IMs is a concept. It is not a production vehicle. Nor is the Xmotion that the company showed off last year or the Vmotion in 2017. Instead, these concepts are meant to show what might be on the horizon and gives the industry a sense of where it’s headed.

But Nissan says more EV production cars — not just concepts — are coming. Seven more to be exact. Le Vot said Monday in Detroit that the automaker will launch an additional seven electric vehicles by 2022.

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In Nissan’s view, an “elevated sports sedan” is sort of a sedan and sort of a crossover. Call it a hybrid sedan. Or a sedanover; a crossan?

The concept vehicle has unusual proportions and sits higher than a classic sedan. The battery is located under the body, which elevates the cabin height.

The IMs also has a stretched interior space, thanks to the vehicle’s extended wheelbase and features pivoting front seats and a rear seat that either offers three-across seating, or, once the slim rear outboard seats are folded, an indulgent “premier seat” in the rear center. Oh, and there are reverse-opening rear doors.

Nissan designers are describing this vehicle as “timeless Japanese futurism. And there are hints of this tech-forward approach throughout the vehicle, including the shapes of the instrument panel and door trim which are meant to reflect “a spaceship to the moon.”

The IMs concept is all-wheel drive and is powered by dual electric motors located at the front and rear of the vehicle.The vehicle’s electric powertrain generates 483 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque and a 115-kWh battery provides an estimated range of 380 miles on a single charge.

It’s also equipped with an advanced air suspension that adapts to different driving situations.

Because it’s the future and a concept, the IMs can be switched to full autonomous mode. When this happens, the concept’s headlights and rear combination light turn blue and the lighting travels continuously from front-to-rear to notify pedestrians and other drivers of its autonomous status.

A fully autonomous Nissan IMs isn’t here for customers, nor will it be anytime soon, if ever. But it does intimate the automaker is interested in a vehicle that can be driven by humans and then switched to full automation.

Perhaps nearer term is Nissan’s plan to bring virtual reality into the vehicle. Nissan has developed a platform it calls I2V, or Invisible-to-Visible, which is also in the IMs concept.

I2V, which is made possible with Omni-Sensing technology that Nissan announced last week at the CES, could allow drivers to see around corners and visualize precise information about traffic jams. Drivers may even enjoy the company of a “passenger” from the virtual world in the form of a three-dimensional augmented-reality avatar inside the car, according to Nissan.

Today at the North American International Auto Show held in Detroit, Mich., Infiniti revealed its latest electric concept vehicle. Called the QX Inspiration Concept, this crossover is a preview of what’s to come from Infiniti.

The concept is built on Infiniti’s upcoming EV platform that will reportedly be used in all of Infiniti’s initial electric vehicles.

This concept is about the size of the BMW X3, Mercedes-Benz GLC and Infiniti’s QX50. And for good reason. That size is a proven winner with buyers. It’s the same reason Audi and Jaguar’s first EVs are around the size. Right now, consumers are looking for the height of small SUVs with the ride of a mid-size sedan. This platform is set to deliver both in an electric flavor.

QX Inspiration concept combines an electrified all-wheel-drive powertrain with SUV body, and introduces a new INFINITI form language for the electrified era

The platform is said to sport electric motors on each axle, providing direct power and all-wheel drive. This arrangement can be tuned in several fashions and does not necessarily speak to the potential performance of the vehicle. If coded as such, the dual motors could deliver blistering torque and 0-60 numbers or tuned in such a way to maximize range by preventing ludicrous speeds.

Infiniti didn’t release expected range of the upcoming platform or power numbers, as the automaker is still a few years away from releasing its EVs to dealers. Pricing will likely be in line with competitors, making the sticker price around $75,000 – $85,000.

French startup Shine wants to be the only professional bank account you need if you’re a freelancer. So far, 25,000 people signed up to the service and the company recently raised a $9.3 million funding round.

Shine wants to help freelancers in France all steps of the way. After signing up, the app helps you fill out all the paperwork to create your freelancer status. You then get a card and banking information.

This way, you can generate invoices, accept payments and also pay for stuff. Creating an account and basic transactions have been free so far. But starting on January 21st, freelancers will have to pay €4.90 to €7.90 per month depending on their status.

Freelancers who generate less than €70,000 (so-called “auto-entrepreneurs”) will pay €4.90 per month while others will pay more. This is still cheaper than most professional bank accounts. Existing users won’t have to pay anything.

The company mentioned premium plans in the past, but Shine now wants to create a single plan with a unified feature set for everyone. If you’re more serious about your indie lifestyle and generate a lot of revenue, you’ll pay a bit more.

In addition to that change, the startup is working on some new features. Soon, you’ll be able to generate better exports for accounting purposes. You’ll be able to deposit checks, control your account from a web browser, generate better invoices and more.

But Shine doesn’t just want to build an endless list of bullet points with as many features as possible. The company wants to create the best banking assistant for freelancers. You get notifications for admin tasks and you can ask the support team any question you have when it comes to the administrative part of your work.

It’s not just customer support for the product — it’s customer support for French paperwork. And that has some value by itself.

While there have been a few massive surveillance startups in China that have raised funds on the back of computer vision advances, there’s seemed to be less fervor outside of that market. Tel Aviv-based AnyVision is aiming to leverage its computer vision chops in tracking people and objects to create some pretty clear utility for the enterprise world.

After announcing a $27 million Series A in mid-2018, the computer vision startup is bringing Lightspeed Venture Partners into the raise, closing out the round at $43 million.

“When you have a company with the technology AnyVision has, and the market need that I’m hearing from across industries, what you need to do is push the gas pedal and build an organization which can monetize and take on this opportunity to grow massively,” Lightspeed partner Raviraj Jain told TechCrunch.

Right now the 200-person company has its eyes on the security and identity markets as it aims to bring its computer vision technology into more industry-tailored solutions.

The company’s “Better Tomorrow” product delivers camera-agnostic surveillance insights from its object and human-tracking tech. “Sesame” is the company’s consumer-facing play for bringing mobile banking authentication to hundreds of millions of phones. The company is still looking to release a retail analytics platform to customers as well.

A group of Google employees are taking to Twitter and Instagram tomorrow in an attempt to educate the public about forced arbitration, Recode first reported. From 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. EST, this group will share stories and facts about forced arbitration, as well as interviews from survivors and experts.

This comes about one month after this same group of 35 employees banded together to demand Google end forced arbitration as it relates to any case of discrimination. The group also called on other tech workers to join them.

Forced arbitration ensures workplace disputes are settled behind closed doors and without any right to an appeal. These types of agreements effectively prevent employees from suing companies.

Following the massive, 20,000-person walkout at Google in November, Google got rid of forced arbitration for sexual harassment and sexual assault claims, offering more transparency around those investigations and more. Airbnb, eBay and Facebook quickly followed suit.

But optional arbitration at Google is only granted for full-time employees, which does not include the thousands of contract workers at the company. As the employees noted on Medium in December, arbitration is still forced for discrimination cases pertaining to race, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, age and ability. Additionally, employee contracts in the U.S. still have an arbitration waiver, the employees wrote.

“The change yielded a win in the headlines, but provided no meaningful gains for worker equity … nor any actual change in employee contracts or future offer letters,” the group wrote on Medium today. “(As of this publication, we have confirmed Google is still sending out offer letters with the old arbitration policy.)”

TechCrunch has reached out to Google and will update this story if we hear back.