Year: 2019

While IBM is getting sued by the city of Los Angeles, accusing it of covertly mining user data in the Weather Channel app in the US, it’s testing the waters for another hyperlocal weather feature that — coincidentally — relies on data that it picks up from sensors on app users’ smartphones, among other devices, combined with AI at IBM’s end to help model the information.

Today at CES, the company announced new service called the Global High-Resolution Atmospheric Forecasting System — GRAF for short — a new weather forecasting system that says it will provide the most accurate weather for anywhere in the world, running every hour, and in increments of every three kilometers everywhere by way of crunching around 10 terabytes of data every day.

The new hyperlocal weather data will start to become available in 2019.

This is a key piece of news particularly for the developing world. There has been some effort already to create and use hyperlocal weather information in the US market using things like in-built sensors that can pick up information on, for example, barometric pressure — the very feature that is now the subject of a lawsuit — but there have been fewer efforts to bring that kind of service to a wider, global audience.

“If you’re a farmer in Kenya or Kansas, you will get a way better weather prediction,” said Ginny Rometty, the CEO of IBM, announcing the service today at CES.

She added that other potential end users of the data could include airlines to better predict when a plane might encounter turbulence or other patterns that could affect a flight; insurance companies managing recovery operations and claims around natural disasters; and utility companies monitoring for faults or preparing for severe weather strains on their systems.

Rometty said that the Weather Channel app’s 100 million users — and, in an estimation from Mary Glackin, the Weather Channel’s VP of business solutions, 300 million monthly active users when considering the wider network of places where the data gets used including Weather.com and Weather Underground — will be providing the data “with consent”. Data sourced from businesses will be coming from customers that are partners and are also likely to become users of the data.

That data in turn will be run through IBM’s Power9 supercomputers, the same ones used in the US Department of Energy’s Summit and Sierra  supercomputers, and modelled using suplementary data from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

The news represents a big step change for the Weather Company and for meteorology research, Glackin said in an interview.

“This is going to be the first significant implementation of GPUs at the Weather Company,” she told me. “The weather community has been slow to adopt to technology, but this is providing much improved performance for us, with higher resolutions and a much finer scale and focus of short-term forecasts.”

The new service of providing hyperlocal data also underscores an interesting turn for IBM as it turns its efforts to building the Weather Channel business into a more global operation, and one that helps deliver more business returns for IBM itself.

Glackin said the Weather Channel app was the most-downloaded weather app in India last year, underscoring how it, like other consumer apps, is seeing more growth outside of the US at the moment after already reaching market saturation in its home market.

Saturation, and some controversy. It’s not clear how the lawsuit in LA will play out, but the fact that it’s been filed definitely points to changing opinions and sensibilities when it comes to the use of personal data, and more generally how consumers and authorities are starting to think about how all that data that we are generating every day on our connected devices is getting used.

IBM is by far not the only company, nor the most vilified, when it comes to this issue, but at a time when the company is still trying to capitalise on the potential of how to commercialise the trove of information and customer connections in its wider business network, this will be something that will impact it as well.

Notably, Rometty closed off her keynote today at CES with a few parting words that reference that.

“As we work on these technologies, all that data that we talked about, that ownership, they belong to the user, and with their permission, we use that,” she said, adding, “These technologies also need to be open and explainable.”

All flights departing Heathrow, the U.K.’s largest airport, have been suspended following a reported drone sighting.

An airport spokesperson told TechCrunch that staff are “working closely” with London’s Metropolitan Police, “to prevent any threat to operational safety.”

“As a precautionary measure, we have stopped departures while we investigate,” the spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We apologize to passengers for any inconvenience this may cause.”

The airport did not say who reported the drone.

The Metropolitan Police tweeted that it “received reports of a sighting of a drone” near Heathrow, where commercial drones are programmed to not be allowed to fly. A spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Arriving flights are continuing to land at the airport, however.  Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed shortly after departures were halted dozens of planes circling around Heathrow.

Heathrow Airport is one of the busiest airports in the world, seeing close to 80 million passengers travel through its terminals last year.

It’s the second reported drone sighting at a U.K. airport in as many months. Gatwick Airport south of London faced two days of disruption following a reported drone sighting just before Christmas. In the end, more than 1,000 flights were cancelled, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded. No arrests were made following the Gatwick incident the since a local couple were released without charge on December 23.

U.K. police were given new powers to fight drones, including an expansion of exclusion zones around airports.

A spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Authority, which regulates U.K. airspace, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

More as it comes in…

Using technology that sounds like it comes straight out of Predator, Miku is a new baby monitor that watches and senses your baby’s vitals in real time. The system not only broadcasts a secure feed of your baby’s sleep time but it also analyzes the heart rate and breathing without wearables.

The system uses military technology to sense the baby’s vitals and it will store video even if the Wi-Fi goes out.

The Miku Baby Monitor uses patent-pending AI and machine learning technology called SensorFusion, which combines optical and wireless sensing to build a full and accurate picture of the baby’s critical health metrics with no wires or wearables. Beyond breathing and sleeping patterns, these sensors track temperature and humidity levels to ensure the baby’s environment is stable. Miku’s technology and corresponding app work with smartphones from anywhere in the world and sends instant alerts when it matters most, giving parents a tranquil peace of mind.

The app also records data over time, giving the parents a better understanding of sleep patterns and the like. Developed by CEO and new parent Eric White, the Miku builds on White’s experience building gear and software for the Department of Defense, ITT, L3 and Picatinny.

The team believes the monitor will also work will with elder care as well, allowing worried children to keep an eye on their parents.

“The Miku Baby Monitor is only the beginning for us,” said White. “As a new father, I know there is a huge need for this level of technology and sophistication in a product people entrust to help care for their loved ones. The applications for Miku’s technology are limitless.”

The Miku is available for order now and costs $399.

Amazon has reportedly acquired Israeli disaster recovery startup, CloudEndure. Neither company has responded to our request for confirmation, but we have heard from multiple sources that the deal has happened. While some outlets have been reporting that the deal was worth $250 million, we are hearing that it’s closer to $200 million.

The company provides disaster recovery for cloud customers. You may be thinking that disaster recovery is precisely why we put our trust in cloud vendors. If something goes wrong, it’s the vendor’s problem, and you would be right to make this assumption, but nothing is simple. If you have a hybrid or multi-cloud scenario, you need to have ways to recover your data in the event of a disaster like weather, a cyber attack or political issue.

That’s where a company like CloudEndure comes into play. It can help you recover and get back and running in another place, no matter where your data lives, by providing a continuous backup and migration between clouds and private data centers. While CloudEndure currently works with AWS, Azure and AWS, it’s not clear if Amazon would continue to support these other vendors.

The company was backed by Dell Technologies Partners, Infosys and Magma Venture Partners, among others. Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research, says Infosys recently divested its part of the deal and that might have precipitated the sale. “So much information is sitting in the cloud that you need backups and regions to make sure you have seamless recovery in the event of a disaster,” Wang told TechCrunch.

While he isn’t clear what Amazon will do with the company, he says it will test just how open it is. “If you have multi-cloud and want your on-prem data backed up, or if you have backup on one cloud like AWS and want it on Google or Azure, you could do this today with Cloud Endure,” he said. “That’s why i’m curious if they’ll keep supporting Azure or GCP,” he added.

CloudEndure was founded in 2012 and has raised just over $18 million. It most recent investment came in 2016 when it raised $6 million led by Infosys and Magma.

The company formerly known as WeWork has rebranded as the We Company — although a better name for its network of on-demand office spaces for the newly incorporated and nominally employed; co-living spaces for the same Easyjet-set; and educational and coding services could be “House of Cards”.

News of the rebranding (first reported via Fast Company) comes on the heels of reports that the company would no longer be receiving a planned $16 billion golden parachute to escape a soon-to-be-sinking real estate market investment from longtime backer Masayoshi Son’s Softbank and his Softbank Vision Fund.

WeWork, which lost $1.2 billion over the first three quarters of 2018 according to an FT report, is rebranding to shift attention from its real estate play to a broader blend of living and educational services that now comprise the three pillars of its business (to be clear, the largest pillar is its real estate properties).

The knock against the company has always been that it was a real estate investment masquerading as a tech company (a case which the FT made magisterially last year).

In the blog post, WeWork chief executive Adam Neumann laid out the company’s new strategy which divides the company into three different business lines, WeWork (real estate), WeLive (its co-living spaces) and WeGrow (for education).

For the We Company to succeed a few things need to happen. Revenue needs to rebalance to the WeLive and WeGrow businesses quickly and it needs to grow its services even more aggressively. And the result of each needs to be actual profitability.

There aren’t a lot of really hard metrics to gauge the company’s current performance on. But the good people at Bloomberg did uncover actual financial data on the company’s debt, which is underperforming compared to industry benchmarks.

Neumann said that the original vision of the company was an all encompassing network of offerings that would help customers, bank, shop, live, and play. That’s a mighty goal worthy of a Vision Fund, but its vision may turn out to be a fever dream if the indicators are right and the worldwide slide into recession finally happens.

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1. IBM unveils its first commercial quantum computer

The 20-qubit system combines the quantum and classical computing parts it takes to use a machine like this for research and business applications into a single package. While it’s worth stressing that the 20-qubit machine is nowhere near powerful enough for most commercial applications, IBM sees this as the first step towards tackling problems that are too complex for classical systems.

2. Apple’s trillion-dollar market cap was always a false idol

Nothing grows forever, not even Apple. Back in August we splashed headlines across the globe glorifying Apple’s brief stint as the world’s first $1 trillion company, but in the end it didn’t matter. Fast-forward four months and Apple has lost more than a third of its stock value, and last week the company lost $75 billion in market cap in a single day.

3. GitHub Free users now get unlimited private repositories

Starting today, free GitHub users will now get unlimited private projects with up to three collaborators. Previously, GitHub had a caveat for its free users that code had to be public if they didn’t pay for the service.

4. Uber’s IPO may not be as eye-popping as we expected

Uber’s public debut later this year is undoubtedly the most anticipated IPO of 2019, but the company’s lofty valuation (valued by some as high as $120 billion) has some investors feeling uneasy.

5. Amazon is getting more serious about Alexa in the car with Telenav deal

Amazon has announced a new partnership with Telenav, a Santa Clara-based provider of connected car services. The collaboration will play a huge role in expanding Amazon’s ability to give drivers relevant information and furthers the company’s mission to bake Alexa into every aspect of your life.

6. I used VR in a car going 90 mph and didn’t get sick

The future of in-vehicle entertainment could be VR. Audi announced at CES that it’s rolling out a new company called Holoride to bring adaptive VR entertainment to cars. The secret sauce here is matching VR content to the slight movements of the vehicle to help those who often get motion sickness.

7. Verizon and T-Mobile call out AT&T over fake 5G labels

Nothing like some CES drama to start your day. AT&T recently shared a shady marketing campaign that labeled its 4G networks as 5G and rivals Verizon and T-Mobile are having none of it.

Educational computing kit company Kano announced today that it has signed a two-year licensing deal to create Disney-branded products later this year. Details are still pretty scant on how precisely the deal with Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Consumer Products will take shape, but the first product looks to be a Star Wars-themed kit due out in the second half of the year. 

Kano, which is best known for its kid-centric computer kit, has already had success with third-party branding, including a Harry Potter wand kit, which was announced over the summer. Disney, too, has been more aggressive in licensing its IP to hardware startups, including, notably, STEM education companies like Littlebits, which has released both Marvel and Star Wars-themed products.

“Our goal at Kano is to take you on a journey, unlocking powers in yourself and others, through the medium of technology – from wands that really work, to computers you make yourself, and more” Kano CEO Alex Klein said in a statement, “Collaborating with Disney is a blessing. We can combine connected, creative technologies with some of the most memorable stories ever told.”

Of course, if Sphero’s struggles taught us anything, it’s that IP alone does not a successful product make. The company had an undeniable hit on its hands with the release of its BB-8 robot, but it flew a little too close to the sun when it effectively quadrupled its product output to include additional Star Wars robots and Pixar and Marvel-branded products.

Kano will also be taking a fairly ambitious approach to licensing, with several more brands already in the works.

Google Assistant is following Amazon Alexa into vehicles. One of the first products to offer the capability is from Anker — just like as one of the first in-vehicle Alexa products.

Called the Roav Bolt, the device plugs into a 12-volt power port and lets the driver access Google Assistant through the “OK Google” command. Once connected to the in-vehicle system through Bluetooth or a 3.5mm cable, the product will let drivers play audio, enable navigation, read text, make calls and more.

The Roav Bolt also has two USB ports for recharging devices too.

I tried out the Roav Viva a year ago and found the system clunk to configure and a pain to use. Also, at the time Alexa lacked features that made it compelling to use in a vehicle and the third-party device lacked some functionality like support for Spotify. This time around with Google Assistant, it’s likely the Roav Bolt offers enough features to make it more worthwhile for more people. This seems like an easy way to get the power of Google into a car.

The Roav Bolt will be available for purchase in February for $49.99

Comcast is putting A.I. to work to protect its customers’ home networks. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced Xfinity xFi Advanced Security, an A.I.-powered service designed to monitor, block and inform customers about online threats while providing protection for all connected devices in the home – including smart home and “internet-of-things” devices that are often the target of online attacks due to their weaker security.

People’s homes no longer only have computers and phones connecting to the internet. Today, our houses are filled with connected devices, like voice-powered speakers, smart home appliances, security cameras, connected doorbells and thermostats and much more. Even some kids’ toys connect to the internet.

According to data from Cisco, there will be nearly 13 connected devices per person in North America. And the number of attacks across these connected devices is growing – by 600 percent between 2016 and 2017, Symantec reported.

That’s where Comcast’s new subscription service comes in. xFi Advanced Security is available to turn on from within the existing xFi app, where it then begins to monitor and manage the network traffic.

The system analyzes the traffic using A.I. and machine learning technologies, then automatically blocks anything it deems “suspicious activity.”

“We can see traffic coming in that’s not normal – coming from weird IP addresses or known bots, and we can look at the heuristics of the traffic to basically stop it,” explains Fraser Stirling, Senior Vice President of Digital Home, Devices and AI at Comcast. “It’s basically like anomaly detection. We understand that device from all the devices that are connected by brand and model. We can understand what that traffic looks like…so if [the device] starts to do something that’s abnormal to the pattern for your house or for all the people that are using the same thing, we can track that as an anomaly.”

For example, if a device that normally goes to a certain IP address to get its firmware updates is all of a sudden going somewhere else, the service can block the traffic and alert you.

“The most important part of the product is that we tell you,” he says.

Customers will be alerted to these blocked threats in real-time and offered instructions on how to further secure their devices, if need be. For example, if it blocked a suspicious website that was distributing malware, it will provide the URL and explanation. It will later provide the website you visited where that link may have been embedded – helpful in the case of malicious ads, among other things.

A second use case for the product is its proactive scans, which can alert you to other issues – like if a device has all its ports open, for example, which makes it vulnerable to attacks. xFi Advanced Security can close those ports, but it can block the malicious traffic and tell you what’s happening and why through its alerts.

All these alerts can be viewed from the xFi dashboard both online and in the xFi app.

The system is powered in part by the A.I. platform Cujo AI, incidentally a TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 Battlefield finalist. Comcast won’t detail the specifics of its arrangement with Cujo, which it refers to as “ingredient technology partner.” However, it hasn’t made a strategic investment, the way it had done with Plume, the maker of what are now called the xFi Pods.

Beyond enabling the subscription, the new security service doesn’t require set up on the customer’s part. Customers just plug in their various connected devices and turn them on. Afterwards, xFi Advanced Security identifies the device and allows to add them to a user profile – like mom, dad, or child or to the general “household” profile, which covers smart home devices or those used by all.

The service, once enabled, immediately begins to scan and protect the home network – including devices plugged in through Ethernet as well as those connected wirelessly.

In a later version, the company is considering offering more information about the threats it detects and blocks, as well as information about potential security issues – like if a device needs a firmware update, for instance.

While xFi Advanced Security sounds good in theory, security experts tend to be unimpressed until they’re able to put a product through its paces. So it’s too soon to give it a recommendation on that front.

After all, many of today’s smart home devices – especially the cheaper ones – weren’t built with a security-first mindset, and are riddled with flaws. A threat-scanning service can’t actually fix their issues – like their use of default passwords, UPnP left on by default, root passwords in the firmware, or a telnet port left open, for example. xFi Advanced Security can alert you to those issues, however, in some cases.

But people could protect their network if they’d just close UPnP on the router itself, and change the default passwords on the smart devices they connect. And they could do so without a subscription. But most people don’t know how to do these things.

For Comcast, xFi Advanced Security presents an opportunity to generate revenue from xFi customers through services that expand the capabilities of its existing xFi platform. It’s the first subscription-based offering to live on top of xFi, in fact.

Launched in 2017, xFi lets customers control their home networks from a dashboard to do things like set parental controls, pause the Wi-Fi and receive alerts about home network activity, among other things.

The new xFi Advanced Security integrates here, and customers can choose to sign up within the xFi app.

The service is $5.99 per month and is available to any customer who rents an xFi Gateway – meaning, some 15 million homes, notes Comcast. In some markets, it will also be sold as part of package deal, the company says.

The cost of the Gateway ranges from $11 to $13 per month, as prices vary by market. The xFi app is free and available both on Android and iOS.

Additional reporting: Zack Whittaker