Author: azeeadmin

09 Jan 2019

Baidu Cloud launches its open source edge computing platform

At CES, the Chinese tech giant Baidu today announced OpenEdge, its open source edge computing platform. At its core, OpenEdge is the local package component of Baidu’s existing Intelligent Edge (BIE) commercial offering and obviously plays well with that service’s components for managing edge nodes and apps.

Since this is obviously a developer announcement, I’m not sure why Baidu decided to use CES as the venue for this release, but there can be no doubt that China’s major tech firms have become quite comfortable with open source. Companies like Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and others are often members of the Linux Foundation and its growing stable of projects, for example, and virtually ever major open source organization now looks to China as its growth market. It’s no surprise then that we’re also now seeing a wider range of Chinese companies that open source their own projects.

“Edge computing is a critical component of Baidu’s ABC (AI, Big Data and Cloud Computing) strategy,” says Baidu VP and GM of Baidu Cloud Watson Yin. “By moving the compute closer to the source of the data, it greatly reduces the latency, lowers the bandwidth usage and ultimately brings real-time and immersive experiences to end users. And by providing an open source platform, we have also greatly simplified the process for developers to create their own edge computing applications.”

A company spokesperson tells us that the open source platform will include features like data collection, message distribution and AI inference, as well as tools for syncing with the cloud.

Baidu also today announced that it has partnered with Intel to launch the BIE-AI-Box and with NXP Semiconductors to launch the BIE-AI-Board. The box is designed for in-vehicle video analysis while the board is small enough for cameras, drones, robots and similar applications.

09 Jan 2019

DJI drones can fly over crowds if it wears this certified parachute

Most of the time, commercial and personal drones are not allowed to fly over groups of people. For safety, obviously. Indemnis’ drone parachute changes that. The company’s product was just certified to allow operators to legally fly drones over small groups of people. This is the first time such a device received the certification.

Indemnis Parachute For DJI Drones straps onto DJI’s large drones and features a launcher that deploys a parachute when sensor detect flight anomalies.

To become certified, the Alaska-based company’s product had to pass a series of obstacles that included 45 functionality tests across 5 different failure scenarios. The tests were designed to ensure the parachute deploys at the right time, every time.

According to a press release, this product works like this:

“Nexus is a ballistic parachute launcher, triggered automatically if the drone suddenly begins tilting abnormally or falling. It deploys the parachute within 30 milliseconds at 90 mph, through a tube that rapidly inflates to keep the parachute lines away from the drone body and propellers. Indemnis offers the Nexus package today for the Inspire 2, and intends to offer it for Matrice 200 series and Matrice 600 series drones by late 2019.”

A handful of companies are attempting to address drone safety and parachutes are one solution. Often, the products are designed to protect bystanders and the drone itself. DJI has yet to build a parachute into one of its products, though.

09 Jan 2019

See you tonight in Vegas

We will be holding a small event during CES in Las Vegas and we want to see you! We’re looking to meet some cool hardware and crypto startups, so the good folks at Work In Progress have opened up their space to us and 200 of you all to hold a meetup and pitch-off.

We’ll have some pizza and beer and we can hit a bar after the event for some one on one time with the TC folks.

The event will be held at Work In Progress, 317 South 6th Street on Wednesday, January 9, 2019 between 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM PST.

The meetup is sold out so please attend if you’ve picked up or return it to the pool so someone else can grab it. The tickets are here. Arrive early because it looks like it will be packed! Thanks!

The companies pitching are:

Garbican
Lumen
Pundi
Tearado
Whisker Labs
Moona
Square Off
Gbatteries
Genie
Currant
Sunflower Labs

09 Jan 2019

Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and author wife of 25 years, MacKenzie, to divorce

Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos are to divorce after 25 years of marriage.

The Amazon founder and his award-winning novelist wife announced the news in a joint post on social media, writing they had made the decision to divorce after a trial separation and now intend to “continue our shared lives as friends”.

The pair met working at a hedge fund, D.E. Shaw, in the early 90s, and MacKenzie went on to become one of Amazon’s earliest employees.

Her first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, was published in 2005, and won the American Book Award the following year.

She leaves Bezos the world’s richest man — with an estimated net worth of $112BN per Forbes’ 2018 rich list.

(Via Bloomberg)

09 Jan 2019

Daily Crunch: Well Facebook, you did it again

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. Facebook is the new crapware 

Well Facebook, you did it again. Fresh off its latest privacy scandal, the troubled social media giant has inked a deal with Android to pre-install its app on an undisclosed number of phones and make the software permanent. This means you won’t be able to delete Facebook from those phones. Thanks, Facebook.

2. The world’s first foldable phone is real 

Chinese company Royole has beaten Samsung to the market and has been showing off a foldable phone/tablet this week at CES. While it’s not the most fluid experience, the device definitely works at adapting to your needs.

3. CES revokes award from female-founded sex tech company

Outcries of a double-standard are pouring out of CES after the Consumer Tech Association revoked an award from a company geared toward women’s sexual health.

4. Everything Google announced at CES 2019 

Google went all in on the Assistant this year at CES. The company boasted that the voice-enabled AI will make its way onto a billion devices by the end of the month — up from 400 million last year. But what’s most exciting is the expanded capabilities of Google’s Assistant. Soon you’ll be able to check into flights and translate conversations on the fly with a simple “Hey Google.”

5. Rebranding WeWork won’t work 

The company formerly known as WeWork has rebranded to the We Company, but its new strategy has the potential to plunge the company further into debt.

6. Despite promises to stop, US cell carriers are still selling your real-time phone location data

Last year a little-known company called LocationSmart came under fire after leaking location data from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint users to shady customers. LocationSmart quickly buckled under public scrutiny and promised to stop selling user data, but few focused on another big player in the location tracking business: Zumigo.

7. The best and worst of CES 2019 

From monster displays to VR in cars, we’re breaking down the good, the bad and the ugly from CES 2019.

09 Jan 2019

Square launches its in-app payments SDK

Square today announced the launch of its in-app payments SDK that allows developers to build Square-powered payments right into their mobile apps. While Square remains best known for its offline payments solutions that grace virtually ever independent coffee shop and quirky corner store, the company has long offered APIs for taking online payments on the web and for working with its reader hardware.

Today’s launch expands the company’s reach into mobile apps, an area where it faces stiff competition from the likes of Stripe, Adyen and others. Square, however, argues that this launch puts it ahead of the competition, given that it now offers a complete online and offline payments solution.

“With the introduction of in-app mobile payments to the Square platform, developers now have a complete, omnichannel payments solution for all their payment needs,” said Square developer lead Carl Perry in today’s announcement. “From software to hardware to services, Square offers a complete payments experience all in one cohesive open platform. Even better, developers and sellers can manage all their payments across in-store, mobile and online all in one place.”

The SDK is available for Android, iOS and Flutter, Google’s toolkit for building cross-platform applications. For now, only developers in the United States, Canada, UK, Australia and Japan will be able to use it, though. The app provides a default payments flow, but developers can also customize it to match their apps and needs. Using this service, mobile app developers will be able to take payments through the usual credit and debit cards, as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay.

09 Jan 2019

Amazon hires Disney SVP Kyle Laughlin as Director of Alexa Gadgets

Amazon has hired Disney SVP Kyle Laughlin to head its Alexa Gadgets division, TechCrunch has learned. Laughlin spent eight years at Disney, most recently as the SVP and General Manager of Games, Apps and Connected Experience at the entertainment giant’s Consumer Products and Interactive Media division.

According to his LinkedIn profile, the role found Laughlin overseeing apps, connected hardware and games for Disney and Lucasfilm. The gig also involved AI, IoT and AR/VR. Also, lots of Muppets.

Amazon has since confirmed the hire. A spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch, “I can confirm that Kyle Laughlin has joined Amazon as Director, Alexa Gadgets. We’re very excited to have him.”

The gig appears to revolve around the newly defined “Alexa Gadget” category, which the company describes as “fun and delightful accessories that pair to compatible Echo devices via Bluetooth.”

Doesn’t seem like much of a stretch after eight years at Disney. Examples of current Alexa Gadgets include the Echo Wall Clock and Gemmy Industries’ connected Big Mouth Billy Bass and Dancing Plush Animatronics.

In a few short years, the Echo has transformed from smart speaker to a category defining, industry driving project. Alexa has become a huge business for Amazon and left everyone else struggling to catch up. Alexa Gadgets is a big push from Amazon to grow the smart assistant’s ecosystem beyond the smart speaker, through a wide range of connected devices.

09 Jan 2019

Microsoft’s latest Teams features take aim at shift workers

Collaboration tools tend to be geared towards workers who are sitting at a desk for much of the day, but there are plenty of shift workers, also known as first line workers, who rarely use a computer, but still need to communicate with one another and management. Microsoft released several new features today aimed at including these workers.

In a blog post announcing the new features, Emma Williams, Microsoft corporate vice president for modern workplace verticals, wrote that there are two billion such workers. By making the product more mobile-friendly and linking to existing enterprise employee management systems, Microsoft can make Teams more relevant for shift employees.

For starters, Microsoft is making mobile Teams more flexible to meet the needs of a variety of shift worker jobs. Some might need to record and share audio messages, while others might need to share their location or access the camera. Whatever the requirements, Microsoft has started with a Firstline Worker configuration policy template, which IT can customize to meet the needs of various worker types.

The mobile tool also includes a navigation bar, which allows workers to add the tools they use most often for easy access. The idea is to make it as simple as possible to access the tools they need, given that these workers tend to be on their feet or on the move a good part of the day.

Photo: Microsoft

Next, the company has released a new API to help IT connect Teams to existing workforce management systems. The Graph API for Shifts enables first line managers, who are responsible for setting up worker schedules to share data between a company’s workforce management system and Teams, allowing employees to get all of their shift information in one tool. This will be available in public preview later in the quarter, according to the company.

Finally, the tool now includes a new Praise feature, designed to let managers recognize good work by their employees by issuing badges with messages like “Thank you” and “Problem solver.”

The company wants Teams to be more than a tool for knowledge workers. These new features provide a way to include workers that are sometimes left out of these kinds of collaboration tools. The new features also help Microsoft compete with a number of startups who trying to attack the same problem.

These include Crew, a startup that scored a $35 million Series C round just last month, and has raised almost $60 million, and Zinc, which also takes aim at the deskless worker, and has raised $16 million, according to Crunchbase.

Whether Microsoft can appeal to both the knowledge worker and the first-line variety in the same tool remains to be seen, but these updates are clearly an effort to take on this space.

09 Jan 2019

Cambridge Analytica’s parent pleads guilty to breaking UK data law

Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Elections, has been fined £15,000 in a UK court after pleading guilty to failing to comply with an enforcement notice issued by the national data protection watchdog, the Guardian reports.

While the fine itself is a small and rather symbolic one, given the disgraced political analytics firm went into administration last year, the implications of the prosecution are more sizeable.

Last year the Information Commissioner’s Office ordered SCL to hand over all the data it holds on U.S. academic, professor David Carroll, within 30 days. After the company failed to do so it was taken to court by the ICO.

Prior to Cambridge Analytica gaining infamy for massively misusing Facebook user data, the company, which was used by the Trump campaign, claimed to have up to 7,000 data points on the entire U.S. electorate — circa 240M people.

So Carroll’s attempt to understand exactly what data the company had on him, and how the information was processed to create a voter profile of it, has much wider relevance.

Under EU law, citizens can file a Subject Access Request (SAR) to obtain personal data held on them. So Carroll, a U.S. citizen, decided to bring a test case by requesting his data even though he is not a UK citizen — having learnt Cambridge Analytica had processed his personal data in the U.K.

He lodged his original SAR in January 2017 after becoming suspicious about the company’s claim to have built profiles of every U.S. voter.

Cambridge Analytica responded to the SAR in March 2017 but only sent partial data. So Carroll complained to the ICO which backed his request — issuing an enforcement notice on SCL Elections in May 2018, days after the (now) scandal-hit company announced it was shutting down.

The company pulled the plug on its business in the wake of the Facebook data misuse scandal, when it emerged SCL had paid an academic with developer access to Facebook’s platform to harvest data on millions of users without proper consents in a bid to create psychological profiles of U.S. voters for election campaign purposes.

The story snowballed into a global scandal for Facebook and triggered a major (and still ongoing) investigation by the ICO into how online data is used for political campaigning.

It also led the ICO to hit Facebook with a £500,000 fine last year (the maximum possible under the relevant UK data protection law). Although the company is appealing.

The SCL prosecution is an important one, cementing the fact that anyone who requests their personal information from a U.K.-based company or organisation is legally entitled to have that request answered, in full, under national data protection law — regardless of whether they’re a British citizen or not.

Commenting in a statement, information commissioner Elizabeth Denham said: “This prosecution, the first against Cambridge Analytica, is a warning that there are consequences for ignoring the law. Wherever you live in the world, if your data is being processed by a UK company, UK data protection laws apply.

“Organisations that handle personal data must respect people’s legal privacy rights. Where that does not happen and companies ignore ICO enforcement notices, we will take action.”

The Daily Beast reports that at today’s hearing, at Hendon magistrates court, the court was told that the administrators of Cambridge Analytica and its related companies had now provided relevant passwords to the ICO. Cambridge Analytica had previously failed to supply these passwords.

This means the regulator should be able to gain access to more of the data it seized when it raided the company’s London offices in March last year. So it’s at least possible Carroll’s SAR might eventually be fulfilled that way, i.e. by the regulatory sifting through the circa 700TB of data it seized.

However Carroll told TechCrunch he’s hoping for a faster route to get to the truth of exactly what the company did with his data, telling us there’s still “a March court event that could yield our end goal: Disclosure”.

“Why would they rather plead guilty to a criminal offense instead of complying with disclosure required by UK DPA ‘98. What are they hiding? Why has it come to this?” he added.

“Testing the Subject Access Request in this way is an important exercise. Do regulators and companies really know how to fully execute a Subject Access Request? How about when it escalates to a matter of international importance?”

09 Jan 2019

Emtek introduces August-powered smart locks

Looks like August’s big news for the show wasn’t doorbell, after all. Rather, the smart lock maker announced this morning that it will be bringing its technology to three new locks from Emtek.

Like August, Emtek is a part of the Swedish conglomerate Assa Abloy. The implementation of the technology will be similar to August’s relationship with fellow Assa Abloy brand, Yale, where the more tech-savvy start will essentially power the lock’s smart capabilities. August branding won’t appear on the locks themselves, but its app will be required to interact with the technology.

Two of the three will include August’s Auto-Unlock, DoorSense and Auto-Lock tech. The locks will come in keypad or keyed models, priced at $440 and $370 — around $100 pricier than August’s own models. The difference is apparently due to the more premium materials used in Emtek’s version.

The new locks will be available in showrooms where Emtek hardware is sold this spring.