Author: azeeadmin

A lot can change in a year. Not when you’re Equifax.

The credit rating giant, one of the largest in the world, was trusted with some of the most sensitive data used by banks and financiers to determine who can be lent money. But the company failed to patch a web server it knew was vulnerable for months, which let hackers crash the servers and steal data on 147 million consumers. Names, addresses, Social Security numbers and more — and millions more driver license and credit card numbers were stolen in the breach. Millions of British and Canadian nationals were also affected, sparking a global response to the breach.

It was “one of the most egregious examples of corporate malfeasance since Enron,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer at the time.

Yet, a year on from following the devastating hack that left the company reeling from a breach of almost every American adult, the company has faced little to no action or repercussions.

In the aftermath, the company’s response to the breach was chaotic, sending consumers scrambling to learn if they were affected but were instead led into a broken site that was vulnerable to hacking. And when consumers were looking for answers, Equifax’s own Twitter account sent concerned users to a site that easily could have been a phishing page had it not been for a good samaritan.

Yet, the company went unpunished. In the end, Equifax was in law as much a victim as the 147 million Americans.

“There was a failure of the company, but also of lawmakers,” said Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, in a call with TechCrunch. Warner, who serves Virginia, was one of the first lawmakers to file new legislation after the breach. Alongside his Democratic colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the two senators said their bill, if passed, would hold credit agencies accountable for data breaches.

“With Equifax, they knew for months before they reported, so at what point is that violating securities laws by not having that notice?,” said Warner.

“There was a failure of the company, but also of lawmakers.”
_{Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)}

“The message sent to the market is ‘if you can endure some media blowback, you can get through this without serious long-term ramifications’, and that’s totally unacceptable,” he said.

Lawmakers held hearings and grilled the company’s former chief executive, Richard Smith, who retired with his full $90 million retirement package, adding insult to injury. Equifax further shuffled its executive suite, including the hiring of a new chief information security officer Jamil Farshchi and former lawyer turned “chief transformation officer” Julia Houston to oversee “the company’s response to the cybersecurity incident.”

Equifax declined to make either executive available for interview or comment when reached by TechCrunch, but Equifax spokesperson Wyatt Jefferies said protecting customer data is the company’s “top priority.”

But there’s not much to show for it beyond superficial gestures of free credit monitoring — provided by Equifax, no less — and a credit locking app which, unsurprisingly, had its own flaws. In the year since, the company has spent more than $240 million — some $50 million was covered by cyber-insurance. That’s a drop in the ocean to more than $3 billion in revenue in the year since, according to quarterly earnings filings — or more than $500 million in profits. And although Equifax’s stock price initially collapsed in the weeks following, the price bounced back.

Financially, the company looks almost as healthy as it’s ever been. But that may change.

Earlier this year, the company asked a federal judge to reject claims from dozens of banks and credit unions for costs taken to prevent fraud following the data breach. The claims, if accepted, could force Equifax to shell out tens of millions of dollars — perhaps more. The hundreds of class action suits filed to date have yet to hit the courts, but historically even the largest class action cases have resulted in single dollar amounts for the individuals affected.

And when the credit agent giant isn’t fighting the courts, federal regulators have shown little interest in pursuit of legal action.

An investigation launched by a former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, responsible for protecting consumers from fraud, sputtered after the new director reportedly declined to pursue the company. And, although the company is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for the second time this decade, fines are likely to be limited — if levied at all.

Warren sent a letter Thursday to the heads of both agencies lamenting their lack of action.

“Companies like Equifax do not ask the American people before they collect their most sensitive information,” said Warren. “This information can determine their ability to access credit, obtain a job, secure a home loan, purchase a car, and make dozens of other transactions that are critical to their personal financial security.”

“The American people deserve an update on your investigations,” she said.

To date, only the Securities and Exchange Commission has brought charges — not for the breach itself, but against three former staffers for allegedly insider trading.

Escaping any local action, Equifax agreed with eight states, including New York and California, to take further cybersecurity steps and measures to prevent another breach, escaping any fines or financial penalties.

“The American people deserve an update on your investigations”
_{Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)}

Warner blamed much of the inaction to the patchwork of data breach laws that vary by state.

“We’ve got different laws and you don’t have any standard, and part of the challenge around the data breach is that every industry wants to be exempted,” said Warner. It’s not a partisan issue, he said, but one where every industry — from telecoms to retail — wants to be exempt from the law.

“If we really want to improve our business cyber-hygiene, you have got to have consequences for failing to keep up those cyber-hygiene standards,” he said.

It’s a tough sell to posit Equifax, which fluffed almost every step of the breach process, before and after its disclosure, as a victim. While the millions affected can take solace in the beating Equifax got in the press, those demanding regulatory action might be in for a disappointingly long wait.

The future of Coinbase looks something like the New York Stock Exchange. That’s according a vision laid out by CEO Brian Amstrong who was interviewed on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco today.

Coinbase is known for being the most popular exchange for converting fiat currency into crypto — most of the largest traded exchanges are crypto-to-crypto — but he foresees a future in which it plays host to a growing number of cryptocurrencies as it becomes standard for companies to create their own token, which runs alongside equity as an alternative investment system.

“It makes sense that any company out there who has a cap table… should have their own token. Every open source project, every charity, potentially every fund or these new types of decentralized organizations [and] apps, they’re all going to have their own tokens,” Armstrong said.

“We want to be the bridge all over the world where people come and they take fiat currency and they can get it into these different cryptocurrencies,” he added.

That tokenized future could see Coinbase host hundreds of tokens within “years” and even potentially “millions” in the future, according to Armstrong. That’s a big jump on the five cryptocurrencies that it currently supports today, and it would make it way larger than financial institutions like the New York Stock Exchange, which is actually a Coinbase investor and is getting into Bitcoin, or the NASDAQ.

One of the critical pieces of making this vision a reality is, of course, regulation. This week at Disrupt, others in crypto space have argued that a lack of clarity around crypto regulation is costing the U.S. as innovation and startups are being developed in overseas markets. As the founder of a U.S.-based crypto startup that is valued at over $1 billion and is hiring hard, Armstrong doesn’t subscribe to that thesis but he did admit that there is “a big open question” over whether the majority of the new rush of tokens he foresees will be securities or not.

Still, Coinbase has made moves to add security tokens to its portfolio with the acquisition of a securities dealer earlier this year.

“We do feel a substantial subset of these tokens will be securities,” he said. “Our approach has always been to be the most trusted [exchange] and the easiest to use. So we want to be the legal compliant place where you can start to trade these tokens that are classified as securities.”

“Web 1.0 was about publishing information, web 2.0 was about interaction and web 3.0 is going to be about value transfer on the internet because now the web has this native currency and so applications can be built that instantly tap into this global economy on the internet,” Armstrong added.

How international can crypto become? The Coinbase CEO thinks that the total number of people in the crypto ecosystem can reach one billion within the next five years, up from around 40 million today.

You can watch the full video from Armstrong’s interview below.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase, wants to take his company public — maybe on the blockchain.

Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, Armstrong dished on his ambitions for the future of Coinbase.

“We are self-sustaining,” Armstrong said. “You know, we’ve been profitable for quite a while. We don’t have any plans to raise additional capital at this point, but never say never … Someday I’d love to run a public company.”

Armstrong didn’t rule out going public on the blockchain. He said he’s even considered going public on his own platform.

“I think it would be very on mission for us to do that because, of course, we are creating an open financial system,” he said. “Companies could list their stock, which are really tokens, and instead of a cap table, you tokenize the cap table. But I don’t have any decisions on that to share at the moment.”

An innovative exit would be very on-brand for Coinbase. As one of the earliest players in crypto-mania, the company has certainly had to make things up as it goes. It’s worked, as Armstrong said; the company is profitable and was the first-ever cryptocurrency startup to garner a billion-dollar valuation.

Founded in 2012, Coinbase is backed by IVP, Spark Capital, Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Section 32, Draper Associates and more. The company was valued at $1.6 billion in August 2017 with a $100 million Series D last year. The financing was reportedly the largest-ever for a crypto startup.

Watch the full interview with Brian Armstrong below.

At the very beginning, there were 21 startups. After three days of incredibly fierce competition, we now have a winner.

Startups participating in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. They all presented in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup.

After hours of deliberations, TechCrunch editors pored over the judges’ notes and narrowed the list down to five finalists: CB Therapeutics, Forethought, Mira, Origami Labs and Unbound.

These startups made their way to the finale to demo in front of our final panel of judges, which included: Cyan Banister (Founders Fund), Roelof Botha (Sequoia Capital), Jeff Clavier (Uncork Capital), Kirsten Green (Forerunner Ventures), Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures) and Matthew Panzarino (TechCrunch).

And now, meet the Startup Battlefield winner of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018.

Winner: Forethought

Forethought has a modern vision for enterprise search that uses AI to surface the content that matters most in the context of work. Its first use case involves customer service, but it has a broader ambition to work across the enterprise.

Read more about Forethought in our separate post.

Runner-Up: Unbound

Unbound makes fashion-forward vibrators, and their latest is the Palma. The new device masquerades as a ring, offers multiple speeds, and is completely waterproof. And the team plans to add accelerometer features.

Read more about Unbound in our separate post.

Circumventing the Google Play store wasn’t exactly a gamble for Epic, given the fact that Fortnite is essentially a license to print money. But even by its own standards, the game is posting some impressive numbers three weeks after hitting Android.

In a blog post this week, Epic noted that the wildly popular sandbox survival game hit 23 million players on Google’s mobile operating system, spread out across 15 million APK installs. Those numbers are arriving 21 days after the title launched on the OS.

This, like every other piece of Fortnite news, means big bucks for Epic. That’s especially the case here, however, given that the launch means the gaming company is cutting Google’s 30 percent take out of the equation.

Along with the numbers, Epic also highlighted some of its efforts to tackle potential malware threats — an added issue given that the game isn’t distributed through Google’s official channel.

“So far, Epic has instigated action on 47 unauthorized “Fortnite for Android’ websites,” the company writes, “many of which appear to be run by the same bad actors. We continue to police the situation with a goal of taking them offline, or restricting access by leveraging Epic’s connection to a network of anti-fraud partners.”

At a symposium in Washington DC on Friday, DARPA  href="https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-09-07" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced plans to invest $2 billion in artificial intelligence research over the next five years.

In a program called “AI Next,” the agency now has over 20 programs currently in the works and will focus on “enhancing the security and resiliency of machine learning and AI technologies, reducing power, data, performance inefficiencies and [exploring] ‘explainability'” of these systems.

“Machines lack contextual reasoning capabilities, and their training must cover every eventuality, which is not only costly, but ultimately impossible,” said director Dr. Steven Walker. “We want to explore how machines can acquire human-like communication and reasoning capabilities, with the ability to recognize new situations and environments and adapt to them.”

Artificial intelligence is a broad term that can encompass everything from intuitive search features to true machine learning, and all definitions rely heavily on consuming data to inform their algorithms and “learn.” DARPA has a long history of research and development in this space, but has recently seen its efforts surpassed by foreign powers like China, who earlier this summer announced plans to become an AI leader by 2030.

In many cases these AI are still in their infancy, but the technology — especially machine learning — has the potential to completely transform not only how users interact with their own technology but how corporate and governmental institutions use this technology to interact with their employees and citizens.

One particular concern with machine learning is the potential bias that can be incorporated into these systems as a result of the data they consume during training. If the data contains holes or misinformation, the machines can come to incorrect conclusions — such as which individuals are “more likely” to commit crimes — that can have devastating consequences. And, even more frighteningly, when organically coming to these conclusions the “learning” a machine is obscured in something called a black box.

In other words, even the researchers who design the algorithms can’t quite know how machines are reaching their conclusions.

That said, when handled with care and forethought, AI research can be a powerful source of innovation and advancement as well. As DARPA moves forward with its research, we will see how they handle these important technical and societal questions.

After a string of executive departures over the past several months that continued Friday with the resignations of two people in high-profile positions, CEO Elon Musk announced a series of promotions and job updates in an email sent to employees. To be clear, these are not new hires and some of these promotions were already finalized before the most recent resignations reported earlier Friday.

In other words, Musk didn’t suddenly promote a bunch of executives in response to the negative market reaction Friday to the resignations or his marijuana-sampling during a live-streamed podcast with Joe Rogan.

Still, the promotions are notable because it gives rarely provided insight into the structure of the company — as well as who is left. It also shows the increasing workload placed on a few people.

For example, Kevin Kassekert previously headed up infrastructure development, a job that included leading the construction and development of Tesla’s gigafactory near Reno, Nevada. His new title is vice president of people and places, a position that gives him responsibility of human resources — a job that was once filled by Gaby Toledano — as well as facilities, construction and infrastructure. Tesla has more than 37,000 employees and facilities all over the world, including its factory in Fremont, California.

Musk also promoted Jérôme Guillen to president of automotive. Guillen, a former Daimler Freightliner executive, will oversee all automotive operations and program management, as well as coordinate Tesla’s supply chain. Guillen previously headed up Tesla’s truck program and worldwide sales and service.

Other promotions and position updates include:

• Felicia Mayo, who was senior HR director and head of Tesla’s diversity and inclusion program, has been promoted to vice president level and will report to both Kassekert and Musk.
• Laurie Shelby, Tesla’s vice president of environmental, health and safety will now report directly to Musk.
• Cindy Nicola, who heads global recruiting at Tesla, will report to both Kassekert and Musk.
• Dave Arnold has been promoted to head of communications. Arnold fills the role after Sarah O’Brien left this month.

The letter contained a few other forward-looking statements ahead of the company’s next quarterly earnings report.

“We are about to have the most amazing quarter in our history, building and delivering more than twice as many cars as we did last quarter,” Musk wrote. “For a while, there will be a lot of fuss and noise in the media. Just ignore them. Results are what matter and we are creating the most mind-blowing growth in the history of the automotive industry.”

Tesla produced 53,339 vehicles in the second quarter. If Tesla does build and deliver more than “twice” as many as cars as it did last quarter, that means the company would hit something like 107,000 vehicles.

A day after cutting the ribbon on its second (and largest) cashier-free convenience store in Seattle, Amazon has confirmed it will be bringing the Go concept to the City that Never Sleeps.

The Information first noted the news through a number of job listings last night. The company has since confirmed its plans in an email to TechCrunch.

“We plan to open Amazon Go in New York,” an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch. And that’s basically it for the statement. No information on key details like launch timeframe here, but at least the company really cut to the chase on this one.

The stores are a bit of an experiment for the company, which has been dipping its toes into the brick and mortar experience. Announced during the 2016 holiday season, Go still feels like a novelty for retail. The concept ditches cashiers, instead relying on cameras to track shoppers and charging their account when they walk out the door.

The New York store will be Amazon’s first outside of its native Seattle. Amazon does already have a retail presence, courtesy of a pair of bookstores in Manhattan. 

Unity Technologies, the highly valued startup behind one of the most popular game development tools, lost its CFO Mike Foley last week, Business Insider (paywalled) reported.

A company spokesperson confirmed the CFO’s departure, saying it was a “friendly and mutual decision between both parties,” while also noting that the company was searching for a replacement and had some candidates and hoped to announce more details soon.

In a statement, Foley told TechCrunch, “I look forward to seeing Unity’s continued success under its strong leadership team.”

Unity has raised north of $600 million at a valuation over $3 billion, CEO John Riccitiello confirmed to us earlier this week. In an interview at our Disrupt SF 2018 conference, Riccitiello told TechCrunch that the company’s game engine platform now powers about half of all new games.

In April, Riccitiello told the publication Cheddar that the company was on the “general path” toward an IPO. “We’re not putting out dates but I do believe the company is strong enough financially to go public now.”

The company is not the only third-party game engine tool available for developers, but Unity has become a favorite for indie developers due in large part to the breadth of integrations for various game platforms and the ease of deploying to them. The game engine company was started 14 years ago scraped from the remains of a failed video game title, but has begun to grow rapidly in the past couple years particularly due to investor bullishness around AR/VR and the potential for a real-time rendering engine to shape everything from manufacturing design to autonomous systems training.

Update: A previous version of this article mistakenly stated that Foley left his position in June, rather than last week.

Apple Music is rolling out a new playlist series that will feature the Top 100 songs on Apple Music globally and for those countries where Apple Music is available. Because they’re playlists, users will be able to add these top charts for their country or the Top 100 Global songs to their library so they can stream them any time, or listen offline.

The feature was first reported by Rolling Stone, which was given a preview of the changes by Apple.

At launch, there are 116 charts launching in total, including the Top 100 Global and one for each Apple Music market. Many countries will have access to all of these new Top 100 playlist charts, but availability will vary, we understand.

What’s also interesting about the top chart playlists is that they’ll be updated daily at 12:00 AM PT based on Apple Music streams, which keeps them fresh.

Rolling Stone’s report indicates the release of these charts is due to growing importance of streaming numbers. Artists and their managers as well as labels and scouts tend to reference top streaming charts in the hunt for new talent, it says. And the industry has adapted, too, by more heavily weighting paid streaming over free.

On that front, Apple Music’s dominance in North America means its numbers, in particular, are important to track.

Apple Music, now with 50 million paid subscribers worldwide, is currently ahead of Spotify in the North American market, according to comments made by CEO Tim Cook on the latest earnings call.

“We took the leadership position in North America during the quarter and we have the leadership position in Japan, and in some of the markets that we’ve been in for a long period of time,” he said in July.

Spotify is still ahead on the worldwide stage, with 83 million paid users. 

However, it’s worth also pointing out that these new top charts aren’t just launching as a static section of the Apple Music app – they’re dynamic playlists.

That is, Apple’s new Top Charts playlists will not be replacing the existing Top 200 Songs chart, available today.

Playlists are an important battleground between the major streaming services, with Spotify focusing heavily on personalization with playlists like its flagship Discover Weekly, plus Release Radar, Daily Mixes (and a newer variation, Your Daily Car Mix), Your Summer Rewind, and Time Capsule.

Apple Music, meanwhile, offers users a Favorites playlist, along with a New Music Mix, Chill Mix, and is rolling out a Friends Mix in iOS 12.

The feature is available today on Apple Music. You can check out these playlists as an example:

• Top 100 Global 
• Top 100 USA
• Top 100 UK 
• Top 100 Canada 
• Top 100 Russia
• Top 100 Germany
• Top 100 Australia
• Top 100 France
• Top 100 Mexico 
• Top 100 China