Author: azeeadmin

The New York Times is expanding its efforts around audio programming and voice assistants, the company announced today. The NYT says it’s launching a daily flash briefing for Alexa devices, as well as an interactive news quiz, and – in an interesting twist – it will be introducing “enhanced coverage” in its Sunday paper that prompts readers to launch dedicated Alexa skills to learn more about the stories they’re reading.

On weekdays, the Times will offer a short news briefing for Alexa devices that’s hosted by Michael Barbaro of The NYT’s popular podcast, “The Daily.” Listeners can enable the Alexa skill, then ask to hear the top stories by saying “Alexa, what’s my Flash Briefing,” or “Alexa, what’s in the news?,” for example.

For now, the flash briefing consists of the last portion of “The Daily” where Barbaro says “Here’s what else you need to know today.” Over time, the company plans to expand upon that with new stories and sound bites.

Also new today is a daily news quiz, created by “The Daily’s” producers. This will be available on Fridays, and is triggered by saying “Alexa, play The New York Times News Quiz.”

The quiz will ask questions that listeners answer to then be told if they are right or wrong. The skill will provide additional context, as well.

While daily briefing skills and quizzes are among the most popular types of Alexa skills today, the way the paper is experimenting with its Sunday paper contest is interesting.

Skill discovery is still a huge challenge on voice assistants. And even when you enable a skill, you may forget to use it or not remember what it’s called, if it’s not something you launch regularly.

The NYT’s solution is to add Alexa prompts to its printed edition of the Sunday paper, for select sections including travel, music, and books.

Starting this weekend, a special section will feature Travel’s annual list of f ‘52 Places to Go.’ Readers can choose to listen to the Times’s new ‘Traveler’ writer Sebastian Modak, as he visits all the places on the list, by saying, “Alexa, open the 52 Places Traveler.”

In addition, a command to “open The Pop Music Roundup” will offer a voice round-up from Times pop music editor Caryn Ganz, while saying “Alexa, get book recommendations from The New York Times” will trigger Alexa to tell you what the paper’s book critics are reading and recommend.

All three of these Alexa skills will continue beyond this weekend and will include fresh content.

“We’ve only just begun to explore the ways that voice technology can bring Times journalism to our audience, where and how they want it,” said Monica Drake, assistant managing editor, The New York Times, in a statement about the Alexa skills. “This project is a great starting point in this effort as we begin to experiment the ways voice can work in conjunction with stayed mediums like print while also exploring native Times experiences like the flash briefing and interactive news quiz, built specifically for voice services,” she added.

The NYT already offered some of its news through Alexa and other voice assistants prior to today, as its podcast “The Daily” has been available across platforms. But this is the first time it has rolled out dedicated Alexa skills like this.

The Chromecast Audio is no more. Google has decided to stop manufacturing the audio dongle that allowed you to add any ‘dumb’ speaker to your Google Cast setup. If you still want one, you’ll have to hurry — and to entice you to buy a discontinued product, Google is now selling its remaining inventory for $15 instead of $35.

“Our product portfolio continues to evolve, and now we have a variety of products for users to enjoy audio,” Google told us  in a statement. “We have therefore stopped manufacturing our Chromecast Audio products. We will continue to offer assistance for Chromecast Audio devices, so users can continue to enjoy their music, podcasts and more.”

While the Chromecast turned out to be a major hit for Google, the Chromecast Audio was always more of a niche product.

Google is clearly more interested in getting people to buy its Google Home products and Assistant- or Cast-enabled speakers from its partners. It’s also worth noting that all Google Home devices can connect to Bluetooth enabled speakers, though plenty of people surely have a nice speaker setup at home that doesn’t have built-in Bluetooth support. “Bluetooth adapters suck,” Google told us at the time, though at this point, it seems a Bluetooth adapter may just be the way to go.

The Chromecast Audio first launched back in 2015, in conjunction with the second-generation Chromecast. Over the years, the Chromecast Audio received numerous updates that enabled features like multi-room support. Google says it’ll continue to support Chromcast Audio users for the time being, so if you have already invested in this ecosystem, you should be set for a few more years.

 

If you watched Netflix’s latest ‘Black Mirror’ production, there’s no doubt it reminded you of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. Now, the publisher that owns the trademark to “Choose Your Own Adventure,” Chooseco, LLC, is suing Netflix. The publisher is alleging trademark infringement, The Hollywood Reporter first reported.

In the complaint, Chooseco says Netflix “used the mark willfully and intentionally to capitalize on viewers’ nostalgia for the original book series from the 1980s and 1990s. The film’s dark and, at times, disturbing content dilutes the goodwill for and positive associations with Chooseco’s mark and tarnishes its products.”

In one scene, the main character explains to his dad that his video game, ‘Bandersnatch,’ is based on the fictional “Choose Your Own Adventure” book.

20th Century Fox, according to Chooseco, has an options contract to develop a series based on the publisher’s books. Netflix, on the other hand, pursued a license beginning in 2016 but did not receive one, the suit says. Chooseco alleges it also sent Netflix a cease-and-desist letter before the release of ‘Bandersnatch.’

Chooseco is seeking at least $25 million or Netflix’s profits from the film, whichever amount is the greatest, for Netflix’s alleged trademark infringement, false designation of origin, unfair competition and trademark dilution.

Netflix declined to comment for this story.

Square’s C-suite continues to shuffle. One week after the merchant services and mobile payments company tapped Amrita Ahuja to lead finance, replacing long-time executive Sarah Friar who landed the chief executive role at Nextdoor, the company’s head of payments, Mary Kay Bowman, has joined Visa as its head of seller solutions.

Square didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bowman joined Square in 2015 after more than a decade at Amazon, most recently as the e-commerce giant’s director of global payments. In her new role, Visa says Bowman will lead the credit card company’s “strategy for acceptance products and solutions, driving the design, development and delivery of new services and solutions that will transform the payment experience for both sellers and consumers.”

“This is a critical role, as the point of sale is undergoing dramatic change as it shifts from traditional payment acceptance to digital, cross-channel payment experiences,” Visa wrote in a company announcement released Friday morning.

Gartner released its quarterly PC sales survey for the fourth quarter of 2018 this week, and it was the same old story. PC sales plunged in the fourth quarter and were down 1.3 percent for the year. The three top players — HP, Dell and Lenovo — accounted for 63 percent of sales worldwide in the quarter.

The company found in their preliminary sales research that worldwide sales totaled totaled 68.6 million units in the fourth quarter. That may sound like a big number, but it’s down 4.3 percent over the same period last year.

Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said after a couple of quarters of modest growth, the market began to slow down again for a number or reasons including political and economic uncertainty and a CPU shortage. “There was even uncertainty in the U.S. — where the overall economy has been strong — among vulnerable buyer groups, such as small and midsize businesses (SMBs). Consumer demand remained weak in the holiday season. Holiday sales are no longer a major factor driving consumer demand for PCs,” she said in a statement.

That could be because consumers are spending much more time on mobile phones. Many tasks whether shopping, email, banking or social media that once required a home PC can easily be done on a mobile phone now, leaving PCs to the realm of business where it isn’t always practical to do work on a smaller footprint. In fact, Black Friday online shopping totaled $6.1 billion this year with mobile phones accounting for $2.1 billion.

The trade war that has adversely affected Apple and other tech companies probably also had an impact on the PC market.

Lenovo was the biggest winner in the worldwide report, achieving 24.2 percent of marketshare with number of units sold up 5.9 percent from last year. HP had 22.4 percent marketshare but its numbers were down -4.4 percent. Dell came in third with 15.9 percent with marketshare up a modest 1.4 percent.

In the US, sales were even worse, down 4.5 percent, as small business buyers stayed away in the quarter. “The fourth quarter is typically a buying season for small office/home office (SOHO) and small business buyers in the U.S. as they want to use up the untouched budget before the tax year ends,” Kitagawa explained in the report. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to do that this year.

The top three vendors in US sales were HP with 33.4 percent marketshare, growth down -7.6 percent; Dell with 25.7 percent, growth up 0.9 percent and Lenovo with 15.2 percent, growth up a whopping 23.4 percent for the quarter, making it the big winner in the US market in terms of sales growth.

In case you’re wondering, Apple, which was forced to issue new guidance for Q12019 earnings last week due to lower iPhone sales, also had softer PC sales last quarter with numbers down 2.1 percent in the US and 3.8 percent worldwide. Gartner found that Apple PCs account for 12.4 percent of marketshare in the US and 7.2 percent worldwide.

The report is based on data from sales of desktop PCs, notebooks and devices such as the Microsoft Surface, but excludes Chromebooks and iPads. Gartner is careful to point out these are preliminary numbers and they could change once the final data is in.

After weeks teasing renderings and production photos, Elon Musk finally showed off the finished Starship test rocket last night.

As you can well see, the Starship test rocket has a stainless steel skin, which had a few people scratching their heads. Steel is indeed quite durable, but weighs more than other materials used in rockets like carbon fiber, aluminum, and titanium. Musk argues, however, that stainless steel’s resistance to extreme temperature, especially heat, makes it a better fit for this type of rocket.

The Starship rocket, previously called the BFR, is an integral piece of the SpaceX road map. It’s meant to take the place of the Falcon and Falcon Heavy rockets as a primary launch vehicle, which means lots of re-entry (which means lots of heat).

This test model, currently at the Boca Chica, Texas launch site, is meant for suborbital VTOL tests, which will take place in March. The orbital version will be taller, with thicker skins, and a more smoothly curving nose section, with launches on the books for 2020.

SpaceX first Starship hopper under Texas Boca Chica Beach's cloudy sky.@elonmusk #Starship #SpaceX pic.twitter.com/hVg5Ken7Vp

— Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo (@JaneidyEve) January 10, 2019

It’s another week, and another bevy of hits on Chinese tech by the U.S. government. Let’s get up to speed, plus a request for startup lawyer recommendations.

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new — provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like or hate something here.

Venture capital’s leading advocate NVCA pushes for narrower restrictions on foreign investment

Let’s start with the most exciting subject in the world: the federal rulemaking process.

Last year, Congress approved sweeping reforms of CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, providing it with new powers including the ability to review deals made by foreign investors for minority investments (aka the kinds of equity rounds typically received by startups). That reform has put a crimp on SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which has been trying to get around the rules, and has also led to a massive decline in the amount of Chinese venture capital flowing into the Valley.

As the implementation of that reform meanders its way through the federal rulemaking process, one huge challenge is defining what the term “emerging technologies” means. Since the purview of CFIUS will extend to any technology defined under that term, its definition is critically important, but there is just one problem: no one knows what the hell that phrase even is.

So yesterday, the National Venture Capital Association, the leading advocacy org for the asset class, submitted its stance on the debate. In a filing with the Bureau of Industry and Security, the NVCA argues for a relatively narrow interpretation of emerging technologies.

The organization is specifically concerned about controls on technologies like AI/ML and gene editing through CRISPR, because these “horizontal technologies” are very under-defined and thus restrictions on investment could lead to tough challenges for many startups. For instance, startups that fall under these categories could be prevented from taking foreign investment, or sharing information with other startups. In short, it could kill American leadership in these industries.

It’s an important point, but it is also part of a wider challenge — for startups and the government — that no one knows what “AI” means any more than they know what “emerging technologies” mean. Every startup might have (or claims to have!) AI, and that could mean that highly restrictive rules from the Bureau could apply pretty much to everyone, undermining the original intent of reform legislation.

This is a process not worth paying attention to, except that if it were to go stupidly wrong (and this is DC after all), we might suddenly find that the thousands of AI startups in the Valley suddenly become “definitely not AI” startups posthaste.

Don’t expect to ride Chinese subway cars in America anytime soon (except if you live in Boston)

America’s subway cars are widely dilapidated, as riders in systems in Boston, New York, DC, and SF can attest. Replacing those subway cars is a challenge, particularly since no American company manufactures them. Among the largest manufacturers is the China Railway Rolling Stock Corp., which has won deals to replace some of Boston’s aging subway cars.

Now, there is a renewed nationwide push to demand tougher cybersecurity standards on railcars as a way to prevent Chinese companies from receiving these contracts. As the Washington Post noted this week, DC’s Metro officials have rewritten its contract specifications, adding terms to require that all hardware and software go through cybersecurity verification from third-parties.

Further, Congress itself is getting involved in the matter. Per the article:

Both the U.S. Senate and House have sought to block further Chinese penetration of the transit vehicle market. Each chamber has inserted language in annual transportation appropriations bills to impose a one-year ban on new purchases of mass transit rail cars or buses from Chinese-owned companies if the procurement uses federal funding. The ban is not yet law, as final action has been put off until this year.

Cybersecurity is of course a legitimate concern, but so is lowering the cost of subway car replacements. By removing Chinese bidders from this market, Congress is effectively raising the price of subway car replacements for every city in the nation (and do you think they will pay for that increase?)

Huawei export license not renewed

Huawei has had a bullseye on its back for much of the last two years, and now it faces another restrictions.

The company hosts a research and development center in Silicon Valley quaintly called Futurewei, where it designs next-generation telecommunications tech. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the unit has recently seen its export license for some of its technologies pulled by the Commerce Department. That move means that Futurewei won’t legally be allowed to transfer its know-how back to Huawei in China. What becomes of the lab, which the Journal reports has a budget of $16 million, is anyone’s guess.

These little policy actions are starting to add up though. While the administration at one point pulled the entire license for ZTE and nearly killed it, it seems to have now fallen into a pattern of just creating enough frictions in the market to make operating a Chinese company in the U.S. annoying and unprofitable. Which, with some deep irony, is exactly how the Chinese have blocked American companies for years.

Okay so what?

With the massive decline of Chinese investment in Silicon Valley and further export restrictions, it is clear that the Trump administration wants to sever any link between the two countries in the technology industry. While it is still early, it is clear that they have been pretty clearly successful, no doubt helped by the retrenchment of the Chinese economy as growth has slowed on the mainland .

For founders in the U.S., the complications and tough choices have actually declined substantially. A certain universe of LPs and VCs have left the market, and the Chinese market is pretty clearly marked off-limits and is probably best ignored for the time being. The toughest questions might be around partnership deals with the likes of Tencent, but those have not been as heavily targeted by authorities so far. So the China story may well disappear in the coming months as the two countries head in their own directions.

Share your feedback on your startup’s attorney

My colleague Eric Eldon and I are reaching out to startup founders and execs about their experiences with their attorneys. Our goal is to identify the leading lights of the industry and help spark discussions around best practices. If you have an attorney you thought did a fantastic job for your startup, let us know using this short Google Forms survey and also spread the word. We will share the results and more in the coming weeks.

What’s next & obsessions

I’m continuing to explore this theme/thesis of (societal) resilience tech that I discussed yesterday. Lots of you gave feedback on the idea and further avenues to explore.

I want to specifically thank a reader named Beau, who sent me multiple paragraphs, a dozen book recommendations, and a whole list of articles on the subject to get me up to speed. I super appreciate the thoughtfulness, and look forward to sharing more of that list in the coming days.

I love hearing from readers, so if you have thoughts, opinions, articles or books, share them with me: danny@techcrunch.com.

Reading docket

What I’m reading (or at least, trying to read)

• The Planet Remade by Oliver Morton and Networks of New York by Ingrid Burrington.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:

1. Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it suggests it

A TechCrunch-commissioned report has found damning evidence on Microsoft’s search engine. Our findings show a massive failure on Microsoft’s part to adequately police its Bing search engine and to prevent its suggested searches and images from assisting pedophiles.

2. Unity pulls nuclear option on cloud gaming startup Improbable, terminating game engine license

Unity, the widely popular gaming engine, has pulled the rug out from underneath U.K.-based cloud gaming startup Improbable and revoked its license — effectively shutting them out from a top customer source. The conflict arose after Unity claimed Improbable broke the company’s Terms of Service and distributed Unity software on the cloud.

3. Improbable and Epic Games establish $25M fund to help devs move to ‘more open engines’ after Unity debacle

Just when you thought things were going south for Improbable the company inked a late-night deal with Unity competitor Epic Games to establish a fund geared toward open gaming engines. This begs the question of how Unity and Improbable’s relationship managed to sour so quickly after this public debacle.

4. The next phase of WeChat 

WeChat boasts more than 1 billion daily active users, but user growth is starting to hit a plateau. That’s been expected for some time, but it is forcing the Chinese juggernaut to build new features to generate more time spent on the app to maintain growth.

5. Bungie takes back its Destiny and departs from Activision 

The creator behind games like Halo and Destiny is splitting from its publisher Activision to go its own way. This is good news for gamers, as Bungie will no longer be under the strict deadlines of a big gaming studio that plagued the launch of Destiny and its sequel.

6. Another server security lapse at NASA exposed staff and project data

The leaking server was — ironically — a bug-reporting server, running the popular Jira bug triaging and tracking software. In NASA’s case, the software wasn’t properly configured, allowing anyone to access the server without a password.

7. Is Samsung getting serious about robotics? 

This week Samsung made a surprise announcement during its CES press conference and unveiled three new consumer and retail robots and a wearable exoskeleton. It was a pretty massive reveal, but the company’s look-but-don’t-touch approach raised far more questions than it answered.

Tor, the open source initiative which provides a more secure way to access the internet, is continuing to diversify its funding away from its long-standing reliance on U.S. government grants.

The Tor Foundation — the organization behind the service which stands for ‘The Onion Router’ — announced this week that it brought in a record $460,000 from individual donors in 2018. In addition, recently released financial information shows it raised a record $4.13 million from all sources in 2017 thanks to a growth in non-U.S. government donors.

The individual donation push represents an increase on the $400,000 it raised in 2017. A large part of that is down to Tor ally Mozilla, which once again pledged to match donations in the closing months of the year, while an anonymous individual matched all new backers who pledged up to $20,000.

Overall, the foundation said that it attracted donations from 115 countries worldwide in 2018 which reflects its importance outside of the U.S.

The record donation haul comes weeks after the Tor Foundation quietly revealed its latest financials — for 2017 — which show it has lessened its dependence on U.S. government sources. That’s been a key goal for some time, particularly after allegations that the FBI paid Carnegie Mellon researchers to help crack Tor, which served as a major motivation for the introduction of fundraising drives in 2015.

Back in 2015, U.S. government sources accounted for 80-90 percent of its financial backing, but that fell to just over 50 percent in 2017. The addition of a Swedish government agency, which provided $600,000, helped on that front as well as corporate donations from Mozilla ($520,000) and DuckDuckGo ($25,000), more than $400,000 from a range of private foundations, and, of course, those donations from individuals.

Tor is best known for being used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden but, with governments across the world cracking down on the internet, it is a resource that’s increasingly necessary if we are to guard the world’s right to a free internet.

Tor has certainly been busy making its technology more accessible over the last year.

It launched its first official mobile browser for Android in September and the same month it released TorBrowser 8.0, its most usable browser yet which is based on Firefox’s 2017 Quantum structure. It is also worked closely with Mozilla to bring Tor into Firefox itself as it has already done with Brave, a browser firm led by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich.

Beyond the browser and the Tor network itself, which is designed to minimize the potential for network surveillance, the organization also develops a range of other projects. More than two million people are estimated to use Tor, according to data from the organization.

In a government shutdown, everything deemed non-essential stops. As we found out, renewing the certificates on its websites is considered non-essential.

Several government sites are currently inaccessible or blocked by most browsers after their HTTPS certificate expired. With nobody available to renew them during the government shutdown, these sites are kicking back warning errors.

According to Netcraft, a U.K.-based internet security services company, many government domains can’t be accessed until someone fixes the certificates. Some sites, like one Justice Department subdomain, are at the time of writing completely inaccessible because the domain is included in Chrome’s HSTS preload list, used by browsers to force browsers into using HTTPS only when accessing pages on the domain.

Others, like this NASA page and one U.S. Courts website, however, aren’t using HSTS and are still accessible via an interstitial warning.

So what’s happening?

Every time your browser lights up with “HTTPS” in green or flashes a padlock, it’s a TLS certificate encrypting the connection between your computer and the website, ensuring nobody can intercept and steal your data or modify the website. But TLS certificates are notoriously delicate things. When a certificate expires — a common mistake as people often forget to renew them. Depending on the security level, most websites will kick back browser errors while other sites won’t let you in at all until the expired certificate is renewed.

Except in this case, they can’t — because there’s nobody there to buy and install a new certificate.

As it stands, it’s the responsibility of each department and agency to renew the certificate for their own domain. Depending on how many workers have been furloughed and sent home in each agency, renewing a certificate might not be a top priority when they’re short staffed and overworked already.

There is some good news.

Most major government websites aren’t down or likely to go down any time soon. Most government certificates aren’t set to expire for many more months. Also, any government website hosted on cloud.gov, search.gov, or federalist.18f.gov won’t get certificate errors as these domains automatically renew their certificates every three months with Let’s Encrypt.

Until the government opens up again, don’t expect these websites until then. But depending on how long this shutdown lasts, you can certainly expect things to get a lot worse.