Author: azeeadmin

Ever since it first started rolling out, 5G skeptics have attempted to link the next-gen cellular technology to all manner of health issues. Most recently, it’s become an easy scapegoat for the global COVID-19 pandemic, given the rapid rise of both.

Conspiracy theories have gained such a foothold that vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands by destroying cell towers in various European countries. In its latest bid to tamp down on the spread of false information pertaining to the novel coronavirus, Twitter today expanded its COVID-19 guidance to include the topic.

“We’re prioritizing the removal of COVID-19 content when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm,” a spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch. “As we’ve said previously, we will not take enforcement action on every Tweet that contains incomplete or disputed information about COVID-19. Since introducing these new policies on March 18, we’ve removed more than 2,200 Tweets. As we’ve doubled down on tech, our automated systems have challenged more than 3.4 million accounts which were targeting discussions around COVID-19 with spammy or manipulative behaviors.”

The note seems to leave open the possibility of leaving up some share of 5G claims that don’t “potentially cause harm.” Still, the gray area is fairly wide, when considering activities like property destruction seemingly caused in the name of 5G-related conspiracy.

“We have broadened our guidance on unverified claims that incite people to engage in harmful activity,” the company wrote on social media, “could lead to the destruction or damage of critical 5G infrastructure, or could lead to widespread panic, social unrest or large-scale disorder.”

Google’s data centers run 24/7 and suck up a ton of energy — so it’s in both the company’s and the planet’s interest to make them do so as efficiently as possible. One new method has the facilities keeping an eye on the weather so they know when the best times are to switch to solar and wind energy.

The trouble with renewables is that they’re not consistent, like the output of a power plant. Of course it isn’t simply that when the wind dies down, wind energy is suddenly ten times as expensive or not available — but there are all kinds of exchanges and energy economies that fluctuate depending on what’s being put onto the grid and from where.

Google’s latest bid to make its data centers greener and more efficient is to predict those energy economies and schedule its endless data-crunching tasks around them.

It’s not that someone at Google looks up the actual weather for the next day and calculates how much solar energy will be contributed in a given region and when. Turns out there are people who can do that for you! In this case a firm called Tomorrow.

Weather patterns affect those energy economies, leading to times when the grid is mostly powered by carbon sources like coal, and other times when renewables are contributing their maximum.

This helpful visualization shows how it might work – shift peak loads to match times when green energy is most abundant.

What Google is doing is watching this schedule of carbon-heavy and renewable-heavy periods on the grid and shuffling things around on its end to take advantage of them. By stacking all its heavy compute tasks into time slots where the extra power they will draw is taken from mostly renewable energy sources, they can reduce their reliance on carbon-heavy power.

It only works if you have the kind of fluid and predictable digital work that Google has nurtured. When energy is expensive or dirty, the bare minimum of sending emails and serving YouTube videos is more than enough to keep its data centers busy. But when it’s cheap and green, compute-heavy tasks like training machine learning models or video transcoding can run wild.

This informed time-shifting is a smart and intuitive idea, though from Google’s post it’s not clear how effective it really is. Usually when the company announces some effort like this, it’s accompanied by estimates of how much energy is saved or efficiency gained. In the case of this time-shifting experiment, the company is uncharacteristically conservative:

“Results from our pilot suggest that by shifting compute jobs we can increase the amount of lower-carbon energy we consume.”

That’s a lot of hedging for something that sounds like a home run on paper. A full research paper is forthcoming, but I’ve asked Google for more information in the meantime; I’ll update this post if I hear back.

SpaceX has launched another big batch of Starlink satellites, the low Earth orbit spacecraft that will provide connectivity for its globe-spanning high-bandwidth broadband internet network. This brings the total number of Starlink satellites on orbit to 422, though the company plans to de-orbit two of those (the first two prototypes launched) shortly.

Already, SpaceX is the largest private satellite operator in existence – by a wide and growing margin. It’s also managed to keep up the frequent pace of its Starlink launches despite the global COVID-19 crisis, with its last launch taking place March 18. In total, it has flown four such missions since the start of the year, just four months into 2020.

The company has good reason to want to keep up that aggressive pace: Each launch brings it closer to the eventual launch of the Starlink broadband service that the satellites will provide the network backbone for. SpaceX wants that network to be live with coverage available in Canada and the Northern U.S. by sometime later this year, and because of the way its approach works, with small satellites orbiting much closer to Earth than traditional geostationary internet satellites and handing off the connection to one another as they pass the coverage area, they need a whole lot of them to provide stable, reliable, low-latency connections for consumers and businesses.

Starlink aims to expand its service to customers globally next year, which will require even more launches and a much larger constellation. Ultimately, the company has filed documents indicating it could launch between 12,000 and 42,000 small satellites to build out the network to its eventual state, depending on demands and performance.

SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk detailed some of the measures that the company is taking to address complaints that its Starlink satellites are interfering with Earth-based observation of the night sky. The satellites produce lights and can present as light streams in astrophotography, and astronomers argue they interfere with stellar observation and research through Earth-based telescopes and observatories.

Today’s launch also included a recovery attempt for the Falcon 9 booster rocket used, which flew before on SpaceX’s Demo-1 Crew Dragon mission, as well as twice more in 2019. The Falcon 9 landed as planned on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, hopefully marking a return to form after a couple of Falcon 9 booster landings went awry earlier this year.

SpaceX will also attempt to recover the fairing halves used to protect the Starlink satellite cargo during the launch, though not by using nets to catch them as they fall back to Earth slowed by parachutes, due to system upgrades. Instead, it’ll be looking to fish them out of the water, and we’ll update this post with those results, when and if SpaceX makes them available. The company is looking to re-use fairings more frequently, and the net capture process makes it easier to refurbish them for additional use. This is another cost-saving measure as SpaceX continues to strive towards full launch vehicle reusability with its Starship spacecraft, now in development.

Facebook’s major bet on Jio Platforms could create a headache for mobile payments services that have amassed tens of millions of users while struggling to find a business model in the world’s second-largest internet market.

The $5.7 billion investment, Facebook’s second-largest to date, could also further its dominance in India — its biggest market by user count — by expanding the reach of consumer-facing services like WhatsApp and expanding its lead over ByteDance’s TikTok, which has amassed more than 250 million Indian users in two years.

But based on what Facebook and Reliance Jio executives have shared — along with feedback from several industry analysts — the companies that need to worry most about this multi-billion-dollar bet are Walmart’s Flipkart, Paytm and Amazon.

Facebook and Jio executives said their companies will work together to build solutions; their biggest synergy would revolve around JioMart and WhatsApp, given that Reliance Jio is India’s top telecom network with more than 380 million subscribers.

One of those collaborations may allow users to find local stores around them on WhatsApp, talk to store operators and place orders from within the Facebook-owned instant messaging service, said Ajit Mohan, a Facebook VP who spearheads the company’s business in India.

“You can browse shops and talk to the shop owner. And ultimately, where we do want to take this flow is for you to be able to place your orders,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch. Mohan refuted reports that Facebook saw the deal as an opportunity to turn WhatsApp into a so-called “super app,” however.

AT&T gave a first look into how the pay TV business is faring amid the coronavirus pandemic…and it’s not great. The company reported today as a part of its Q1 2020 earnings that its traditional pay TV services, including DIRECTV and its newer streaming option AT&T TV, saw a combined net loss of 897,000 subscribers in the quarter. Meanwhile, its over-the-top streaming service, AT&T TV Now, also lost 138,000 subscribers, following a number of price hikes.

The company’s newer pay TV service, AT&T TV, only just became available nationwide in March. But despite its “streaming” nature — it ships with an Android TV-powered box to deliver TV over the internet — consumers may have already caught on to the fact that it’s still just the worst of pay TV wrapped up in a new delivery mechanism.

The streaming service is expensive compared with today’s over-the-top and video-on-demand options. It’s also laden with fees for things like activation, early termination and additional set-top boxes. And its bundle with AT&T Internet offers each service for $39.99/month for the first 12 months, but ties subscribers into 2-year contracts where prices climb in the second year.

AT&T’s Q1 TV subscriber numbers indicate how quickly the pay TV market is imploding. And perhaps it will decline even more rapidly now that people no longer want to risk coronavirus exposure by having service techs install equipment in their homes. While AT&T TV’s DIY installation may help in that area, it’s unclear if the new service will ever broadly appeal to consumers in the streaming era.

AT&T ended the quarter with 18.6 million pay TV subscribers, down from 19.5 million in Q4 when it lost 945,000 subscribers.

This all puts much more pressure on WarnerMedia to deliver with its May 27th launch of HBO Max. The new direct-to-consumer streaming service promises all of HBO, plus original content, and a library of movies, classic TV and film, fan favorites, and more. But at only $14.99 per month, it won’t be able to replace the lost revenue from high-priced pay TV subscriptions — only offset it.

AT&T also today admitted how the coronavirus outbreak has forced it to rethink its theatrical model.

Just yesterday, WarnerMedia announced the new kids movie “Scoob!” would skip theaters and head straight into homes, where it will be offered at either a $19.99 rental or $24.99 digital purchase. It will later have its “exclusive streaming premiere” on HBO Max.

“We’re rethinking our theatrical model and looking for ways to accelerate efforts that are consistent with the rapid changes in consumer behavior from the pandemic,” said WarnerMedia CEO and AT&T COO John Stankey, as reported by The Wrap.

“When theaters are closed, it’s hard to generate revenue,” he said. “And I don’t expect that’s going to be a snapback. I think that’s going to be something we’re going to have to watch the formation of consumer confidence, not just about going to movies, just in general about being back out in public and understanding what’s occurring there,” Stankey noted.

Overall, AT&T missed on both revenue and earnings in Q1, largely citing impacts from the coronavirus outbreak which reduced earnings by 5 cents per share ($433 million). Total revenue in the quarter was $42.8 billion, short of Wall St. estimates of $44.2 billion. Adjusted EPS was 84 cents per share, versus an expected 85 cents.

A $600 million decline in revenue was attributed to lost ad sales, specifically those that were expected from now-postponed live sports events like March Madness, as well as lower wireless equipment sales.

AT&T’s WarnerMedia division — which includes HBO and Turner broadcast networks in addition to Warner Bros. theatrical releases — was heavily impacted by the pandemic, as well, reporting $7.4 billion in revenue, down from $8.4 billion a year earlier.

“The COVID pandemic had a 5 cents per share impact on our first quarter. Without it, the quarter was about what we expected — strong wireless numbers that covered the HBO Max investment, and produced stable EBITDA and EBITDA margins,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman and CEO, in a statement. “We have a strong cash position, a strong balance sheet, and our core businesses are solid and continue to generate good free cash flow — even in today’s environment. In light of the pandemic’s economic impact, we’ve already adjusted our capital allocation plans and suspended all share retirements,” he added.

The company said it will continue investing in 5G and broadband, two of its only bright spots in the quarter, in addition to investments in HBO Max.

AT&T withdrew its financial guidance due to the “lack of visibility related to COVID-19 pandemic and recovery,” it said.

The Los Angeles Cleantch Incubator is rebooting its incubator program and moving from rolling applications to a cohort model beginning with sixteen new startups. 

Los Angeles’ not-for-profit incubator exchanges sweat equity in the form of services and office space, and the promise of $20,000 in funding for local pilot projects, for a 1.5 percent to 3 percent stake in a company.

“This is a renewed incubation program switching to the cohort model. the great part of a rolling program was that you could meet the startups where they were. The challenge with that was giving founders steady programming,” said chief executive Matt Peterson.

Nearly one-third of the founders involved in the incubator’s latest program are women, over half of the founders are people of color and over 5 percent are veterans, making the new cohort the most diverse in the incubator’s history.

Peterson is also flagging what he believes is a first for an incubator where startups can earn back their equity if they show hard numbers that indicate privileging diversity and access in hiring and in the availability of technologies and services to low income communities.

Some of the companies in the incubator’s current cohort may also provide a small degree of support — and jobs — to Los Angeles residents hit hard by the social distancing measures the city and state have enacted to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.

Companies like SparkCharge, ePave, and Cero Bikes are all companies that could employ local residents and launch shovel-ready projects with potential funding from local stimulus plans.

“As LA’s most established incubator, we have a strong track-record of empowering and supporting entrepreneurs truly representative of our energetic, diverse, and innovative city,” says Matt Petersen, chief executive officer of  the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. “It is critical to help startups deliver solutions for clean air and greenhouse gas mitigation. By continuing our investment in startup incubation, we will help stimulate the economy now, invest in industries that will bring future clean jobs to our communities, and spur innovation to develop climate mitigation solutions.”

The new incubator program will last for two years and is structured in a way that allows for startups to buyback equity from the incubator upon completion of certain milestones. 

Companies in the new class include:

• Alumina Energy, a U.S based energy storage technology company designing and building energy storage systems for the utility, industrial, and commercial scale power generation and process heat markets.

• CERO Bikes, a family-owned and operated business that designs and produces compact electric cargo bikes.

• ChargerHelp! an on-demand charging station repair service.

• ePave, which has developed a new composite material that can reduce the greenhouse gas effects of surfaces.

• InPipe Energy has developed a technology that generates low cost electricity from the flow of water through gravity-fed water pipelines. 

• Jump Watts sells fixed and mobile charging stations for all types of electric vehicles.

• Maxwell Vehicles offers power train conversions, maintenance and management for light industrial vehicles to make the switch to electric or hybrid electric vehicles.

• NeoCharge makes smart splitters that allow for faster home electric vehicle charging without the need for panel upgrades or other home modifications.

• Noria provides education and services for industrial companies to improve efficiency by enhancing their lubrication processes.

• Prime Lightworks makes electric propulsion systems for small satellites.

• SEED sells a farm-in-a-box for folks who want to grow their own produce. More information available

• SparkCharge is a manufacturer of modular electric vehicle charging units. The company partners with roadside assistance companies to service electric vehicle owners when they run out of range.

• Substance Power and Mobility is founded by a team of former aerospace and automotive entrepreneurs and executives and is working on developing energy storage hardware.

• Sustainable Building Council uses modified shipping containers with grid independent water and power to make affordable housing.

• TBM Designs makes self-shading window systems using thermo-bimetal to reduce energy costs by cutting the need for air conditioning.

• Xeal has an electric car charging system that makes chargers money-making assets for apartments and offices.

The Los Angeles Cleantch Incubator is rebooting its incubator program and moving from rolling applications to a cohort model beginning with sixteen new startups. 

Los Angeles’ not-for-profit incubator exchanges sweat equity in the form of services and office space, and the promise of $20,000 in funding for local pilot projects, for a 1.5 percent to 3 percent stake in a company.

“This is a renewed incubation program switching to the cohort model. the great part of a rolling program was that you could meet the startups where they were. The challenge with that was giving founders steady programming,” said chief executive Matt Peterson.

Nearly one-third of the founders involved in the incubator’s latest program are women, over half of the founders are people of color and over 5 percent are veterans, making the new cohort the most diverse in the incubator’s history.

Peterson is also flagging what he believes is a first for an incubator where startups can earn back their equity if they show hard numbers that indicate privileging diversity and access in hiring and in the availability of technologies and services to low income communities.

Some of the companies in the incubator’s current cohort may also provide a small degree of support — and jobs — to Los Angeles residents hit hard by the social distancing measures the city and state have enacted to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.

Companies like SparkCharge, ePave, and Cero Bikes are all companies that could employ local residents and launch shovel-ready projects with potential funding from local stimulus plans.

“As LA’s most established incubator, we have a strong track-record of empowering and supporting entrepreneurs truly representative of our energetic, diverse, and innovative city,” says Matt Petersen, chief executive officer of  the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. “It is critical to help startups deliver solutions for clean air and greenhouse gas mitigation. By continuing our investment in startup incubation, we will help stimulate the economy now, invest in industries that will bring future clean jobs to our communities, and spur innovation to develop climate mitigation solutions.”

The new incubator program will last for two years and is structured in a way that allows for startups to buyback equity from the incubator upon completion of certain milestones. 

Companies in the new class include:

• Alumina Energy, a U.S based energy storage technology company designing and building energy storage systems for the utility, industrial, and commercial scale power generation and process heat markets.

• CERO Bikes, a family-owned and operated business that designs and produces compact electric cargo bikes.

• ChargerHelp! an on-demand charging station repair service.

• ePave, which has developed a new composite material that can reduce the greenhouse gas effects of surfaces.

• InPipe Energy has developed a technology that generates low cost electricity from the flow of water through gravity-fed water pipelines. 

• Jump Watts sells fixed and mobile charging stations for all types of electric vehicles.

• Maxwell Vehicles offers power train conversions, maintenance and management for light industrial vehicles to make the switch to electric or hybrid electric vehicles.

• NeoCharge makes smart splitters that allow for faster home electric vehicle charging without the need for panel upgrades or other home modifications.

• Noria provides education and services for industrial companies to improve efficiency by enhancing their lubrication processes.

• Prime Lightworks makes electric propulsion systems for small satellites.

• SEED sells a farm-in-a-box for folks who want to grow their own produce. More information available

• SparkCharge is a manufacturer of modular electric vehicle charging units. The company partners with roadside assistance companies to service electric vehicle owners when they run out of range.

• Substance Power and Mobility is founded by a team of former aerospace and automotive entrepreneurs and executives and is working on developing energy storage hardware.

• Sustainable Building Council uses modified shipping containers with grid independent water and power to make affordable housing.

• TBM Designs makes self-shading window systems using thermo-bimetal to reduce energy costs by cutting the need for air conditioning.

• Xeal has an electric car charging system that makes chargers money-making assets for apartments and offices.

Ask any woman and she will tell you that most of her bras do not fit her optimally. In fact, a majority of women end up wearing the wrong size. A large part of the problem is that sizing is standardized, unlike women’s bodies. With every passing year, more people are shopping online, meaning fewer opportunities to actually try on bras — a trend that’s only accelerating given the shutdown the world is experiencing right now.

One particular problem, and a widespread one, according to entrepreneurs Jaclyn Fu and Lia Winograd, is that bras are generally too big for small-chested women. It’s the reason the former co-workers came together to found Pepper, a three-year-old, Denver-based startup that’s expressly focused on creating bras that fit smaller cup sizes.

As Fu explains it, most bra companies use a size, say 36C, then apply that same design to other bra sizes, like a 32A. While the step is logistically sound — applying a standard base design to other sizes — it doesn’t translate well into actual fit.

“It means a person who is a 32A is wearing a design that was intended for a 36C, causing fit issues like cup gaps,” says Fu.

Usually, women try to resolve the problem by tightening their bra straps or changing sizes, but Pepper’s solution is to create its own, smaller cup molds from a factory in Medellin, Colombia, where Winograd grew up.

Fu made the first prototype for Pepper based on her own chest size. Since then, she’s gone to customers’ houses to conduct fittings and research. Beyond cup size, Pepper also addresses underwire woes, making its products less curved and shorter to follow the natural size of a smaller-chested woman.

To increase customer engagement, Pepper started virtual one-to-one fit sessions for customers who are buying a bra online for the first time, and like other companies has a “fit quiz” for people to take online, too.

Pepper now sells a wide variety of sizes, all the way from from 30A to 38B, and prices range from $48 to $54.

Pepper certainly isn’t the only startup trying to fit into the bra industry. Companies like Kala, SlickChicks and ThirdLove all tout comfort and inclusivity in sizing and fitting.

The biggest of the three is ThirdLove, a San Francisco DTC bra and underwear company that has raised $68.6 million in known venture capital to date, per Crunchbase. ThirdLove brands itself as a brand that sells a “bra for every body” with inclusive sizes, and is now expanding into retail, international markets and swim and athletic wear. The company was last valued at more than $750 million.

It’s unclear how many new brands the market can support, or that can survive this pandemic. Even companies with meaningful market share and fresh capital are struggling to stay afloat as shoppers reduce their spend right now. Earlier this month, ThirdLove laid off 30% of its staff, citing COVID-19’s impact on business.

Even still, Pepper’s founders remain optimistic. Pepper’s Kickstarter $10,000 launch campaign — staged in 2017 — was separately funded in less than 10 hours, Fu notes.

The success of that campaign just helped the company secure $2 million in seed funding from investors, including Precursor Ventures, New York University Innovation Fund and Denver Angels. Others participating include the co-founder of MyFitnessPal, Albert Lee.

She adds that the company, which employs three people, is “close to profitability” on a $3 million revenue run rate. In 2019, most of its sales came directly from consumers on their site — a good sign that its growth ties to user loyalty versus relying on partnerships with retailers.

The nuance of buying a bra has long been an in-person ordeal. But now, because of COVID-19’s spread and the resulting shut down of many brick-and-mortar stores, those who need a new bra might have to turn online for the very first time. It’s an opportunity for companies like Pepper to prove that they can master fit without measuring tape and a changing room.

Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health has released updated projections of when we can expect U.S. case numbers of COVID-19 infections to peak and decline, based on different levels of social distancing measures. The updated projects, which take into account the most recent information, show that with around a 30 percent decrease in social contact we could be nearing a national peak of new cases for now by the end of April – but that if you decrease social contact by just 20 percent, the picture changes drastically, with a late peak that extends into mid-May and grows the number of new daily cases to as many as 30,000.

The Columbia projections are used to advise the White House Coronavirus Task Force, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), New York City and many other governments across the U.S. These updated projections also note that while we may hit a peak in the coming days, that also means that hospital and ICU capacity will be at their max in the same period. Again, Columbia researchers note, too, that this info doesn’t take into account local variances in when peaks arrive, and that some areas could have different peaks at different times even with a consistent 30 percent social contact reduction.

The model developed by the Columbia research team includes transmission and fatality numbers, movement by populations across city and state lines, and information like the capacity of emergency field hospitals, all info that was not available when the original modelling was done. You can take a look at the interactive graphs and daily estimates resulting from the model yourself here via Columbia’s website.

This is one of a number of recent updated projections from public health experts, epidemiologists and medical researchers that predict the impact of a relaxation of social distancing measures now could have disastrous consequences in terms of prolonging and worsening the spread of COVID-19, and also on taxing healthcare resources (not to mention frontline workers).

MIT also projected a similar impact from the relaxation of measures currently in place, predicting an “exponential explosion” would result. Meanwhile, some states are already implementing such restriction relaxations, despite consensus from informed experts and researchers indicating it’s too early to begin such rollbacks.

The tech industry (and the world at large) is not experiencing temporary anxiety — the uncertainty we’re all coping with is the new normal.

Sudden shifts in behavior have made some startups targeting slow-moving, old-school industries more relevant than they could have imagined, such as those in telehealth, distance learning and remote work. Most, however are seeing massive decreases in revenue, forcing them to cut costs and even lay off teams to slash burn rates. Other startups simply won’t be here in three to six months.

Cowboy Ventures founder and managing partner Aileen Lee, who coined the term “unicorn,” says tech companies going through scenario planning need to begin thinking long-term.

“We’ve spent the last month scenario planning with our portfolio companies, and in most cases, we’ll have conversations about what these scenarios can include,” said Lee. “And when we look at the planning around those scenarios, they often don’t feel conservative enough. Most entrepreneurs are optimists, and we are, too! But it seems safer to have more conservative plans [and start expecting] that this is going to impact us for longer and be worse than we expected.”

Lee and Cowboy Ventures partner Ted Wang joined TechCrunch on Tuesday for our first episode of Extra Crunch Live, a virtual speaker series for Extra Crunch members. In a live Q&A that included questions from myself and the Extra Crunch audience, Wang and Lee covered a wide range of topics, including PPP loans, advice for business leaders around layoffs, the right time to seek funding and the right firms from which to seek that funding, how to pitch during a downturn and which sectors in particular Cowboy is interested in financing right now.

You can check out the best insights from the call, or catch up on the full conversation via the YouTube embed below.

We have several outstanding guests, including Charles Hudson, Mitch and Freada Kapor, Mark Cuban, Roelof Botha, Hunter Walk and Kirsten Green, joining us on Extra Crunch Live over the next few weeks. Sign up for Extra Crunch to get access to all of them.