Author: azeeadmin

Trulia, the online real estate site owned by its former rival Zillow, wants to give you a better idea of what a certain neighborhood feels like before you move there. To do this, the company today launched Neighborhoods, a feature that brings together direct reviews and feedback from residents based on the existing What Locals Say tool, data and images from Trulia’s own team (including drone shots), as well as more general information about other neighborhood highlights and safety info.

This new feature is now available for 300 neighborhoods in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Austin and Chicago, with 1,100 more planned to go live throughout the rest of 2018. These new neighborhood guides are available in Trulia’s mobile apps and on the web. However, the feature is a bit hidden and will only pop up when you search for a neighborhood in Trulia. I also had no luck bringing it up on the web, but the mobile version is quite nice. It’d be nice to be able to pin a link to a neighborhood guide somewhere in the app, though.

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The overall idea is solid. The neighborhood you buy in matters, after all. Indeed, Trulia says 85 percent of homebuyers say that the neighborhood matters as much to them as the house itself. You’ll still want to spend a bit of time in the neighborhood you are looking at, but tools like this can give you an early feel for what’s right for you. Combined with Trulia’s existing data about things like commute times and local crime, if nothing else, you can at least cross a few areas off your list with this.

“Prior to Trulia Neighborhoods, there wasn’t a resource that showed consumers what life is really like in a neighborhood,” said Tim Correia, senior vice president and general manager at Trulia. “Our research found consumers were determined to find this type of information and even developed a series of hacks to source these valuable insights. It was clear it was time to rebuild the home and neighborhood discovery experience from the ground up and empower consumers with all the information to make the best decision for themselves.”

Beta software always presents a risk going in. Companies usually recommend not installing it in primary devices for that very reason. For those who like to live on the edge, however, the latest beta of iOS 12 presented some very real issues.

Reports of buggy performance lag, freezes and crashes were pretty widespread for the seventh beta of the upcoming mobile operating system, causing some pundits to recommend skipping the install outright.

It’s a marked change over previous builds, which largely seemed to run fairly smoothly. Seems there were enough reports to cause Apple to pull the over the air update, however, less than 24 hours after it first started hitting devices. All of this doubly surprising, given the fact that iOS is likely near final, at this point, with the public version of the software expected to arrive at some point next month (along with, one hopes, some new hardware).

We’ve reached out to Apple to find out when we can expect beta 7 to rise again.

Google parent Alphabet has invested $375 million in next-gen health insurance company, Oscar Health. Google has been a longtime supporter of the six-year-old New York company, having previously invested in Oscar through its Capital G investment wing and Verily health and life sciences research wing.

“Alphabet has invested in Oscar over many years and has seen the company and its team up close. We’re thrilled to invest further to help Oscar in its next phase of growth.” an Alphabet spokesperson told TechCrunch.

That $165 million round raised back in March valued the health startup at around $3 billion. The new round maintains a similar valuation, while giving Alphabet a 10 percent share in Oscar. The deal also finds longtime Google employee and former CEO Salar Kamangar joining Oscar’s board.

Oscar co-founder and CEO Mario Schlosser announced the news in an interview with Wired, telling the site, “We can hire more engineers, we can hire more data scientists, more product designers, more smart clinicians who can think about health care a different way. It’s the acceleration of that product roadmap that fascinates us the most. The second, more tangible piece, is that we’re launching new product lines.”

Part of that product expansion includes getting into Medicare Advantage in 2020, which is a deviation from the current offerings in the individual and employer insurance markets. Oscar started out by offering insurance for individuals, growing rapidly during the launch of the Affordable Care Act and then rolling into small business offerings with its product Oscar for Business. Medicare represents a new vertical for the company, adding to its existing focus on both the individual and employer insurance markets.

“Oscar will accelerate the pursuit of its mission: to make our health care system work for consumers,” Schlosser said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “We will continue to build a member experience that lowers costs and improves care, and to bring Oscar to more people — deepening our expansion into the individual and small business markets while entering a new business segment, Medicare Advantage, in 2020.”

Making a bipedal robot is hard. You have to make sure maintain exquisite balance at all times and, even with the amazing things Atlas can do, there is still a chance that your crazy robot will fall over and bop its electronic head. But what if that head is a quadcopter?

University of Tokyo have done just that with their wild Aerial-Biped. The robot isn’t completely bipedal but it’s designed instead to act like a bipedal robot without the tricky issue of being truly bipedal. Think of the these legs as more a sort of fun bit of puppetry that mimics walking but doesn’t really walk.

“The goal is to develop a robot that has the ability to display the appearance of bipedal walking with dynamic mobility, and to provide a new visual experience. The robot enables walking motion with very slender legs like those of a flamingo without impairing dynamic mobility. This approach enables casual users to choreograph biped robot walking without expertise. In addition, it is much cheaper compared to a conventional bipedal walking robot,” the team told IEEE.

The robot is similar to the bizaree-looking Ballu, a blimp robot with a floating head and spindly legs. The new robot learned how to walk convincingly through machine learning, a feat that gives it a realistic gait even though it is really an aerial system. It’s definitely a clever little project and could be interesting at a theme park or in an environment where a massive bipedal robot falling over on someone might be discouraged.

Following the issuance of a report from the FCC’s Inspector General essentially saying the reports of cyberattacks on the agency were made up out of whole cloth, several lawmakers are demanding answers from Chairman Ajit Pai.

The report, published last week, reveals that the narrative of an attack against the FCC’s comment system — a narrative the agency has propped up for over a year — had no evidence to support it. The comment system, the record indicates, was simply overwhelmed by people hammering it after becoming aware of net neutrality issues and how they could make their voice heard.

Part of this long-lived mistake was, necessarily, making false statements to the public and Congress, since the latter repeatedly requested more information on the purported attacks. Although federal prosecutors declined to pursue this infraction, the members of Congress to whom Pai repeatedly told untruths have indicated they are not likely to forgive and forget.

Representatives Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Mike Doyle (D-PA), Jerry McNerney (D-CA) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI) sent a letter (PDF) to Ajit Pai today admonishing him and his office for their failure. Pallone and Doyle particularly have been nipping at the chairman’s heels almost constantly since he took the job, so they have extra cause to be angered by his actions.

Given the significant media, public, and Congressional attention this alleged cyberattack received for over a year, it is hard to believe that the release of the IG’s Report was the first time that you and your staff realized that no cyberattack occurred. Such ignorance would signify a dereliction of your duty as the head of the FCC, particularly due to the severity of the allegations and the blatant lack of evidence.

It is troubling that you allowed the public myth created by the FCC to persist and your misrepresentations to remain uncorrected for over a year… To the extent that you were aware of the misrepresentations prior to the release of the Report and failed to correct them, such actions constitute a wanton disregard for Congress and the American public.

Chairman Pai does have a legitimate excuse to a certain extent in that the FCC’s Office of the Inspector General had requested that the agency keep quiet about its investigation while it was ongoing. So we may fairly say that Pai and his office may have in some ways had their hands tied.

But clearly I am not the only one who finds that inadequate justification for the FCC’s behavior. To cling to an explanation, with no evidence, provided by a person (the former chief information officer) apparently distrusted by Pai as a partisan and who left in October 2017 — to cling to it so completely and give no word at all that there was perhaps another explanation? It doesn’t make sense.

As the members of Congress write, it’s inconceivable that Pai and his office were unaware of the doubts regarding and material deficiencies of the cyberattack story. That would be a major failure of one kind. And if they were aware and didn’t say so under direct congressional inquiry, that’s a failure of another kind.

The letter asks for Pai to explain:

• When his office first became aware that the events of last May were possibly not an attack
• Why the FCC’s previous statements to the public and Congress have not been publicly amended
• What exactly the Inspector General told Pai not to discuss or disclose during the investigation

The FCC is given two weeks (until August 28) to respond to these and other questions.

A group of Tinder founders and executives has filed a lawsuit against parent company Match Group and its controlling shareholder IAC.

The plaintiffs in the suit include Tinder co-founders Sean Rad, Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen — Badeen still works at Tinder, as do plaintiffs James Kim (the company’s vice president of finance) and Rosette Pambakian (its vice president of marketing and communications).

We’ve reached out to IAC for comment, as well as Pambakian, who’s served as our main contact at Tinder. We’ll update the post if we hear back.

The suit alleges that IAC and Match Group manipulated financial data in order to create “a fake lowball valuation” (to quote the plaintiffs’ press release), then stripped Rad, Mateen, Badeen and others of their stock options. It points to the removal of Rad as CEO, as well as other management changes, as moves designed “to allow Defendants to control the valuation of Tinder and deprive Tinder optionholders of their right to participate in the company’s future success.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Greg Blatt, the Match CEO who became CEO of Tinder as well, groped and sexually harassed Pambakian at the company’s 2016 holiday party, supposedly leading the company to “whitewash” his actions long enough for him to complete the valuation of Tinder and its merger with Match Group, and then to announce his departure.

In response, the plaintiffs are asking for “compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial, but not less than $2,000,000,000.”

“We were always concerned about IAC’s reputation for ignoring their contractual commitments and acting like the rules don’t apply to them,” Rad said in the release. “But we never imagined the lengths they would go to cheat all the people who built Tinder. The Tinder team — especially the plaintiffs who are currently senior leaders at the company — have shown tremendous strength in exposing IAC/Match’s systematic violation of employees’ rights.”

As-filed complaint.pdf by TechCrunch on Scribd

At a Samsung event last week, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins explained why he doesn’t stream with female gamers.

“If I have one conversation with one female streamer where we’re playing with one another, and even if there’s a hint of flirting, that is going to be taken and going to be put on every single video and be clickbait forever,” said Ninja, who is married, in an interview with Polygon.

As you might expect, this stance was met with plenty of backlash.

Ninja then doubled down on his stance, clarifying that it comes down to an issue of online harassment.

Please read. pic.twitter.com/egfplBQFYD

— Ninja (@Ninja) August 13, 2018

First and foremost, everyone has the prerogative to make decisions for their own personal life. If Ninja believes that the online harassment suffered (by just about any internet celebrity) is too much for him and his family to deal with, and that playing with women will exacerbate that harassment, then that is his choice.

The problem is that it goes against his usual stance of taking responsibility for his position as a role model.

As Kotaku aptly points out, Ninja has made real moves toward being a role model for his 10 million+ Twitch followers, from cutting down on cursing on stream to giving to charity and other important causes. In fact, Ninja sees his commitment to charities and his role as an activist as one of the most amazing things he’s done in his life.

And he’s well aware of his influence. He often “raids” less popular Twitch streamers’ channels, including some women, to give them exposure.

So why be a role model who doesn’t include women?

Yes, being a celebrity comes with an inordinate amount of online harassment. And that sucks. But it also comes with a level of responsibility. Not everyone has the platform to make an actual difference in this world. And when our Vice President, and other influencers, have decided that being alone in the same room (virtual or otherwise) with women opens them up to too much vulnerability, they make it that much harder for women to achieve the same influence.

Remember, gaming is about as extreme a culture as a woman can find herself in. Not only are women excluded in this male-dominated community, but they’re often sexually and verbally harassed, which isn’t helped much by the fact that games themselves portray women as props moreso than protagonists.

Ninja is the most influential gamer of our generation, the likes of which have never been seen before. The success of female streamers and gamers surely isn’t reliant on him. But he could very well change the hearts and minds of a generation of young men who may stop thinking of women as less, and might start thinking of them as equals.

DC Universe’s digital subscription and streaming service has just appeared on Google Play, ahead of its planned fall 2018 release. Announced in late June, the service includes a streaming library of original programming like a live action version of “Teen Titans” and several other shows; plus a selection of DC animated movies, classic TV series like “Wonder Woman,” the four Christopher Reeve-starring Superman films; and a host of other content like a lineup of digital comics, an online forum, and more.

So far, interested users can only sign up to pre-order the service, and that, apparently, has not changed. However, the company has said that it would begin a beta test in August, and the app’s launch appears to be the first indication that’s about to kick off.

One screen, for example, shows a board within the community section where beta users can offer feedback.

The Google Play version of the app is listed as “Unreleased,” but you are able to now download it to supported Android devices. Unfortunately, you’re not able to view its content without becoming a beta tester – even if you signed up to pre-order the new subscription service. When we tested this, we were instead directed to a placeholder screen after logging in that says: “Your Universe Begins Fall 2018.” (Don’t worry, Oath corporate Expense Account auditors – I’ll cancel this. I’m just trying to do my job here, okay? Please don’t email me.)

 

The new app was released on Monday, and because it’s still not usable by the general public, it has no reviews. It also has no app description in its current state.

The app’s screenshots do give a sense of how the subscription service will look and feel, though. It opts to default to a dark theme, and has both a hamburger navigation and a bottom bar.

The navigation bar at the bottom offers links to “Movies & TV” and a “starred” section of favorites. Off to the right are links to the comics, an account info screen, and the online community. These buttons are not fixed, it seems, and scoot closer together or further apart, depending on what’s tapped. This gives it an uneven feel, aesthetically speaking. (It sorta kills me.)

Like most streaming services, the app also supports the ability to pick up where you left off, with features like “dive back in” and “continue watching.” And underneath the titles themselves are not just the episode lists and details, but also a link to the community.

There’s an Encyclopedia that lets you read the heroes’ backgrounds, another screen shows, plus digital comics to download, and a simple rating system involving a thumbs up icon.

DC Universe hasn’t publicly announced that the beta test has launched, but fans should probably keep their eyes peeled.

The app is expected across platforms, including iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and the web.

Pandora Premium is coming to Google Home, Mini, and Max devices, and other smart speakers and screens with Google Assistant built-in, the company announced this morning. The integration means listeners who pay for Pandora’s on-demand music service will be able to search and play any song, album, or playlist, just by asking Google, and can even search by lyrics, play their personalized “mood” playlists, and take other actions using their voice.

For example, Google Assistant users will be able to thumbs up and thumbs down tracks on Pandora, skip tracks, create new stations, or play a song again, using voice commands.

The service can also be set as the default on Google Home, so you don’t have to specify to play the songs via Pandora when issuing commands.

Support for Pandora Premium on Google Home has been long-awaited. Pandora Plus and Pandora’s free service have been available on Google Home since November 2016.

The Premium service, however, is Pandora’s true Spotify competitor, offering a more robust feature set in addition to on-demand music.

Access to personalized soundtracks is one of Pandora Premium’s newer features, and a potential selling point for the company’s top-tier service, along with this new Google Assistant integration.

In an effort to challenge Spotify, Pandora this spring rolled out its own set of personalized playlists based on listening behavior and other factors, built using its Music Genome. This made Pandora capable of creating over 60 personalized playlists. Most users will only see a subset of those – like “party soundtracks, or those for moods like “happy” or “rainy days,” or those for various genres of music they like. Now these, too, can stream over Google Assistant-powered devices.

The ability to search by lyrics is another benefit to using Pandora Premium on Google Assistant devices – and an area where Spotify is glaringly absent. Not only does Spotify not offer lyrics search, it doesn’t even offer lyrics. And we’re hearing that it has no plans to launch this feature anytime soon, though it continues to test this. (For example.)

Meanwhile, Spotify’s rivals are offering search by lyrics, including Amazon Music – which lets you do lyrics searches using Alexa – and Apple, which is rolling out lyrics search in the latest version of Apple Music. Many Spotify users are beginning to notice this missing feature, and regularly complain. At some point, Spotify’s inability to keep up with the market on voice (it has just barely managed a voice search button) and lyrics could give competitors an edge, along with Spotify’s lack of hardware, like Apple’s HomePod or Amazon’s Echo.

Apple Music, for instance, is now ahead of Spotify in North America, according to statements made by Apple CEO Tim Cook during the last earnings call.

Pandora’s potential is more of a mixed bag. There’s a growing market of those who pay for Pandora’s service. The company reported in July. It added 351,000 paying customers across both Premium and the mid-level tier, Pandora Plus, in the last quarter, bringing the total paying customer base to 6 million. That’s up 23% year-over-year. But its total active user base was down 6% year-over-year to 71.4 million.

But Pandora is addressing the needs of cross-platform support, in an effort to meet users anywhere they want to stream. It now supports over 2,000 connected devices including TVs, smart speakers, game consoles, streaming players, and more. These days, its listeners are increasingly using Pandora through voice-activated devices – up nearly 50% since last year, the company says.

Pandora is offering a free 90-day trial of Premium to Google Home users via the Google Home app on Android or the Play Store.

Pandora Premium was one of two major additions to Google Assistant devices on Tuesday – Deezer is also now available, allowing customers access to more than 36 million HiFi tracks and voice support, Google noted.

Group FaceTime’s launch is going to be delayed. The feature, which supports up to 32 people in a single audio or video call, was pulled from the latest iOS 12 and macOS Mojave betas released on Monday, and will be held until a later date, says Apple. According to the company’s Release Notes for both operating system updates, Group FaceTime will “ship in a future update later this fall.”

The feature was introduced at this year’s WWDC, with the goal of capitalizing on the growing popularity of larger group video chat sessions – especially among younger people. Today, apps like Houseparty, Instagram, and Snapchat, among others, cater to this audience with group video calling support of their own. But they don’t offer support for up to 32 people – a feature that requires a lot of technical overhead, and apparently, more time to prep than Apple had planned.

Apple didn’t offer any official explanation for the delay, but early beta testers have said the feature has been working well so far. Of course, it’s one thing to go from supporting some 4 million beta testers, to supporting everyone who installs the iOS 12 and macOS Mojave updates.

It’s not unusual for Apple to hold back features from its September OS releases. With iOS 11, Apple held back AirPlay 2, Messages in iCloud, and Apple Pay Cash, for example.