Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Qumulo, the Seattle-based data storage startup, announced a bunch of updates today including support for NvME caching, an approach that should enable customers to access faster flash storage at a lower price point.

NvME flash storage development is evolving quickly, driving down the price with higher performance, a win-win situation for large data producers, but it’s still more expensive than traditional drives. Qumulo CEO Bill Richter pointed out that the software still has to take advantage of these changing flash storage dynamics.

To that end, the company claims with its new NvME caching capability, it is giving customers the ability to access faster flash storage for the same price as spinning disks by optimizing the software to more intelligently manage data on its platform and take advantage of the higher performance storage.

The company is also announcing the ability to dynamically scale using the latest technologies such as chips, memory and storage in an automated way. Further, it’s providing automated data encryption at no additional charge and new instant updates, which it says can be implemented without any down time. Finally, it has introduced a new interface to make it easier for customers to move their data from on premises data storage to Amazon S3.

Richter says that the company’s mission has always been about creating, managing and consuming massive amounts of file-based data. As the pandemic has taken hold, more companies are moving their data and applications to the cloud.

“The major secular trends that underpin Qumulo’s mission — the massive amount of file-based content, and the use of cloud computing to solve the content challenge, have both accelerated during the pandemic and we have received really clear signs of that,” he said.

Qumulo was founded back in 2012 and has raised $351 million. Its most recent raise was a hefty $125 million last July on a valuation over $1.2 billion.

Reviewing the iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 12 Pro Max at the same time has been an exercise in extremes. I noted in my earlier reviews of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro that it was difficult to evaluate the middle of the lineup without having the extreme ends of the scale available to contrast them. 

Now that I have had a chance to examine those extremes, I have come away incredibly impressed with the job that Apple has done on the whole lineup this year. These phones are extremely well sized, highly crisp from a design perspective and generously appointed with features. Aside from a handful of small items, there are no glaring examples here of artificial cliffs on the feature side or price side that attempt to push people upwards in the lineup. Something that has been the case in some years. 

The most impressive of all of the iPhones 12 this year should be, by all rights, the iPhone 12 Pro Max. It’s big screen and beautiful casing make it very attractive and it has the best camera I’ve ever seen in a phone. 

But in my opinion, the iPhone 12 mini is the most attractive phone in the lineup. The dark horse that makes a strong case for itself outside of the ‘I just want a small phone’ crowd. 

The size

The iPhone mini is 20% smaller and 18% lighter than the iPhone 12 and about half the size of the iPhone 11. It really hits a nicely sweet note for fit, and the lack of a home button means that the screen can accommodate quite a bit more content on display at once. 

Though my larger hands do feel a bit more comfortable on the iPhone 12, I am happy to report that the typing experience on the iPhone 12 mini is far superior to the 4.0” first generation SE. It even gets a leg up on the 4.7” iPhone SE introduced earlier this year because the screen is the same width but taller — letting it pull of the Tardis trick of being smaller with a bigger screen. This allows the Emoji keyboard toggle and the voice dictation button to drop out of the bottom row of keys, relaxing spacing on the return, space and number pad buttons. This additional size, especially for the spacebar, improves the typing experience measurably. The key spacing is a bit less generous than the iPhone 12, but this is a workable situation for typing.

If you look at this and an iPhone 11, because of the way that the screen is rendered, you’re going to see pretty much the same amount of content. 

Speaking of rendering, the iPhone 12 mini is scaled, which means that it is displaying at roughly .96 of its ‘native’ screen resolution of 2340×1080. In my testing, this scaling was not apparent in any way. Given that the mini has a resolution of 476ppi in a smaller screen than the iPhone 12 which clocks in at 460ppi that’s not too surprising. iPhones have been doing integral scaling for years with their magnification features so Apple has plenty of practice at this. I didn’t notice any artifacting or scrolling, and most apps looked just fine proportionally, though some developers that do not take advantage of Apple’s native frameworks that support various screen sizes may have to do a bit of tweaking here and there. 

The iPhone mini has a nice lightweight compactness to it. In order to get a read on its vibe I compared it to the iPhone 4S, which felt far denser, the iPhone 5 which felt a bit more airy and the iPhone 5C which still feels fun but cheap. It shares pedigree with all of these devices but feels far more assured and integral. The iPhone 12 design language doesn’t feel like multiple materials sandwiched together in the way that these earlier devices do. It feels grown, rather than made. 

That integral quality does wonders when it’s such a small device because every millimeter counts. Apple didn’t cheap out on the casing or design and gave it an exterior to match its very performant interior. 

The speaker and microphone grills, I’m sad to say, are asymmetric on the iPhone 12 mini. Ding.

And don’t think you miss out on anything performance related when you go to the mini. While it appears that either heat management, scaling or power management in general has made Apple tweak the processor ever so slightly, the benchmarks are close enough to make it a wash. There is zero chance you ever see any real-world difference between the iPhone 12 mini and any other iPhone 12.

For what it’s worth, the iPhone 12 mini has 4GB of RAM, same as the iPhone 12. The iPhone Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max have 6GB. The biggest real world effect of RAM that I have found on iPhone is less dumping of Safari tabs in the background so if you’re a pro browser take that into account.

The iPhone 12 mini is basically identical in the photography department to the iPhone 12. You lose nothing, it’s a great camera. Nothing much to see there though so I’m not spending any time on it. You will have a world class phone camera, just no telephoto.

If you’re a camera-oriented iPhone user, your usage of the telephoto lens is probably the most crisp deciding factor between the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12. The LiDAR benefits are there, and they absolutely make a big difference. But not having a telephoto at all could be an easy make-or-break for some people. 

Cribbing from my iPhone 12 Pro review here, one easy way to judge is to make a smart album in Photos on a Mac (or sort your photos using another tool that can read metadata) specifying images shot with a telephoto lens. If that’s a sizeable portion of your pics over the last year, then you’ve got a decision to make about whether you’re comfortable losing that option. 

When I did this, just about 19% of my iPhone 11 Pro shots were taken with the telephoto lens. Around 30% of those were portrait shots. So for me, 1 in every 5 images was shot with that tighter framing. It’s just something I find attractive. I like a little bit more precise of a crop and the nice amount of compression (for closer subjects) that comes with the longer focal length.

You don’t get 4k/60fps video but you still can shoot 4K/30fps Dolby Vision video in this super tiny device, which is wild. It’s more than I think any normal iPhone 12 mini user will ever need.

Apple says that the iPhone 12 mini’s battery life is better than the 4.7” iPhone SE and that bore out in my testing. I got through a day easily, with maybe a few percentage points difference between the iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 12. I didn’t have enough time to run a comparison against the battery king, the iPhone 11, but I doubt it would come anywhere near unseating it just from a physics perspective. This thing is small so the battery pack is small and the processor is not being majorly throttled in any way. 

 

 

I did have a chance to try the iPhone 12 mini slip case and I thought it was well made and clever, though absolutely positively not for me. I use my iPhone too much to be sliding it into a sleeve and back out again, it would be an exercise in futility. But if you are in the market for this kind of case, I hold that the Apple version shows off the company’s earned expertise in leather. It’s well trimmed, it has nice edge finishing and a clever clasp. 

It integrates Apple’s MagSafe magnet array to display a live clock on the OLED screen with a space for the ambient light sensor. The clock display is pretty clever. It has a lightly colored background that matches the leather color of the case using the same NFC trick as the silicon cases which display a color matched ring when you put them on. The clock fades in two stages over a few seconds but will turn on when the ambient light sensor knows it’s not in your pocket and the motion coprocessor in the A14 senses movement. 

So a quick lift will flip the time on and let you check it. It also still allows tap-to-wake in the clock window, showing you the color matched time. 

There’s also a hidden card slot for maybe 1 credit card or ID card inside the mouth of the case. Like I said, it’s not for me, but I can appreciate that a lot more is going on in this little case than meets the eye, and it shows off some of the sophistication that could be coming to other MagSafe accessories in the future. 

The conclusion

In my iPhone 12/12 Pro review I noted my rubric for selecting a personal device:

• The most compact and unobtrusive shape.
• The best camera that I can afford.

And this is the conclusion I came to at the time:

The iPhone 12 Pro is bested (theoretically) in the camera department by the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which has the biggest and best sensor Apple has yet created. (But its dimensions are similarly biggest.) The iPhone 12 has been precisely cloned in a smaller version with the iPhone 12 mini. By my simple decision-making matrix, either one of those are a better choice for me than either of the models I’ve tested. If the object becomes to find the best compromise between the two, the iPhone 12 Pro is the pick.

Now that I have had both of those devices in my hand, I can say that my opinion hasn’t changed, but my definitions of the lineup have a bit. 

Because the iPhone 12 mini has no appreciable compromises in feature set from the iPhone 12, I consider these one device with two screen sizes. Yes, this may feel like a ‘duh’ moment but I didn’t want to jump to this place without actually using the mini for an extended period. Most critically, I needed to get a feel for that typing experience. 

The iPhone mini is by far the best value per dollar in Apple’s 2020 lineup. With this you get all of the power and advances of the iPhone 12, everything but the telephoto camera (and 60fps/4k video) of the iPhone 12 Pro and everything but the new sensor in the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Those additions will cost you anywhere from $300-$400 more over the life of your device if you choose to step up. 

I’ve been thinking hard about what a clear break point would be between deciding on the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 mini. If you are someone who really likes or ergonomically needs a smaller screen, you’re being treated to a device with no compromises in core functionality. But if you’re not a “small boi” fan then what is the deciding factor?

For me, it comes to this decision flow.

• Is the iPhone your only camera and do you use it constantly for images? Then choose the iPhone 12 Pro. 
• Are you an iPhone photographer that regularly prints images or edits them heavily? Choose the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
• Are neither of those true, but it is true that the iPhone is your only mobile computing device? Go with the iPhone 12.
• If that’s not true and you regularly carry an iPhone alongside a laptop or iPad, then go with the mini. 

Here, I even made you a handy flowchart if that kind of thing is your bag:

This is one of the best years ever for the iPhone lineup. The choices presented allow for a really comfortable picking routine based on camera and screen size with no majorly painful compromises in raw power or capability. These are full featured devices that are really well made from end to end. 

I hope that this template in sizing sticks around for a while as the powerful camera tech creeps its way down the lineup over time, invalidating at least the photography side of my flowchart above. Until then, this is still one of the better “small” iPhones Apple has ever produced, and certainly one with the least overall compromise.

The iPhone 12 Pro Max is probably the easiest of all of the new iPhone 12 models to review. It’s huge and it has a really, really great camera. Probably one of the best cameras ever in a smartphone if not the best. For those of you coming from an iPhone “Max” or “Plus” model already, it’s a no brainer. Get it, it’s fantastic. It’s got everything Apple has to offer this year and it’s even a bit smaller than the iPhone 11 Pro Max. 

For everyone else — the potential upsizers — this review has only a single question to answer: Do the improvements in camera and screen size and potentially battery life make it worth dealing with the hit in handling ergonomics from its slim but thicc build?

The answer? Yes, but only in certain conditions. Let’s get into it.

Build

I’m not going to spend a ton of time on performance or go through a feature-by-feature breakdown of the iPhone 12 Pro Max. I’ve published a review of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro here and just today published a review of the iPhone 12 mini. You can check those out for baseline chat about the whole lineup. 

Instead, I’m going to focus specifically on the differences between the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the rest of the lineup. This makes sense because Apple has returned us to a place that we haven’t been since the iPhone 8. 

Though the rest of the lineup provides a pretty smooth arc of choices, the iPhone 12 Pro Max introduces a pretty solid cliff of unique features that could pull some people up from the iPhone 12 Pro. 

The larger size sets off all of the work Apple did to make the iPhone 12 Pro look like a jewel. Gold coated steel edges and the laminated clear and frosty back with gold accent rings around the cameras and glossy logo. All of it screams posh. 

Some of you may recall that there was a period of time where there existed a market for ultra-luxury phone makers like Vertu to use fine materials to “elevate” what were usually pretty poorly implemented Symbian or Android phones at heart. Leather, gold, crystal and even diamond were used to craft veblen goods for the über rich just so they could stay ‘above’ the proles. Now, Apple’s materials science experimentation and execution level is so high that you really can’t get anything on the level of this kind of pure luxe manifestation in a piece of consumer electronics from anyone else, even a ‘hand maker’. 

To be fair, Vertu and other makers didn’t die because Apple got good at gold, they died because good software is needed to invest life into these bejeweled golems. But Apple got better at what they did faster than they could ever get good at what Apple does. 

This is a great piece of kit and as mentioned even smaller than previous Max models with the same size screen. But in my opinion, the squared off edges of this year’s aesthetic make this phone harder to hold, not easier at this size. This is essentially the opposite effect from the smaller models. For a phone this size I’d imagine everyone is going to use a case anyway so that’s probably moot, but it’s worth noting. 

My feelings on the larger iPhones, which I haven’t used as a daily driver since the iPhone 8, remain unchanged: these are two-handed devices best used as tablet or even laptop replacements. If you run your life from these phones then it makes sense that you’d want a huge screen with plenty of real-estate for a browser and a pip video chat and a generous keyboard all at once. 

The differences 

When we’re talking about whether or not to move up to this beast I think it’s helpful to have a list of everything here that is different, or you think might be but isn’t, from the iPhone 12 Pro. 

Screen. The 6.7” iPhone 12 Pro Max screen has a resolution of 2778×1284 at 458 ppi. That’s nearly identical but slightly under the iPhone 12 Pro’s 460ppi. So though this is a difference I’d count it as a wash. The screen’s size, of course, and the software support that some Apple and third-party apps to take advantage of the increased real-estate are still a factor. 

Performance. The iPhone 12 Pro Max performs exactly as you’d expect it to in the CPU and GPU department, which is to say exactly the same as the iPhone 12 Pro. It also has the same 6GB of RAM on board. Battery performance was comparable to my iPhone 11 Pro Max testing which is to say it outlasted a typical waking day though I could probably nail it in a long travel day. 

Ultra wide angle camera. Exactly the same. Improved over the iPhone 11 Pro massively due to software correction and the addition of Night Mode, but the same across the iPhone 12 Pro lineup.

Telephoto camera. This is a tricky one because it uses the same sensor as the iPhone 12 Pro, but features a new lens assembly that results in a 2.5x (65mm equivalent) zoom factor. This means that though the capture quality is the same, you can achieve tighter framing at the same distance away from your subject. As a heavy telephoto user (I shot around 30% of my pictures over the last year in the iPhone 11 Pro’s telephoto) I love this additional control and the slightly higher compression that comes with it. 

The framing control is especially nice with portraits. 

Though it comes in handy with distant subjects as well.

There is also one relatively stealthy (I cannot find this on the website but I verified that it is true) update to the telephoto. It is the only lens other than the wide angle across all of the iPhone 12 lineup to also get the new optical stabilization upgrades that allow it to make 5,000 micro-adjustments per second to stabilize an image in low light or shade. It still uses the standard lens-style stabilization, not the new sensor-shift OIS used in the wide angle lens, but it goes up 5x in the amount of adjustments it can make from the iPhone 11 Pro or even the iPhone 12 Pro. 

The results of this can be seen in this shot, a handheld indoor snap. Aside from the tighter lens crop, the additional stabilization adjustments result in a crisper shot with finer detail even though the base sensor is identical. It’s a relatively small improvement in comparison to the wide angle, but it’s worth mentioning and worth loving if you’re a heavy telephoto user.  

Wide angle camera. The bulk of the iPhone 12 Pro Max difference is right here. This is a completely new camera that pushes the boundaries of what the iPhone has been capable of shooting to this point. It’s actually made up of 3 big changes:

• A new f1.6 aperture camera. A larger aperture is plain and simple a bigger hole that lets more light in.
• A larger sensor with 1.7 micron pixels (bigger pixels mean better light gathering and color rendition), a larger sensor means higher quality images.
• An all-new sensor-shift OIS system that stabilizes the sensor, not the lens. This is advantageous for a few reasons. Sensors are lighter than lenses, which lets the adjustments happen faster because it can be moved, stopped and started again with more speed and precision. 

Sensor-shift OIS systems are not new, they were actually piloted in the Minolta Dimage A1 back in 2003. But most phone cameras have used lens shift technology because it is very common, vastly cheaper and easier to implement. 

All three things work together to deliver pretty stellar imaging results. It also makes the camera bump on the iPhone 12 Pro Max a bit taller. Tall enough that there is actually an additional lip on the case meant for it made by Apple to cover it. I’d guess that this additional thickness stems directly from the wide angle lens assembly needing to be larger to accommodate the sensor and new OIS mechanism and then Apple being unwilling to let one camera stick out further than any other. 

These are Night Mode samples, but even there you can see the improvements in brightness and sharpness. Apple claims 87% more light gathering ability with this lens and in the right conditions it’s absolutely evident. Though you won’t be shooting SLR-like images in near darkness (Night Mode has its limits and tends to get pretty impressionistic when it gets very dim) you can absolutely see the pathway that Apple has to get there if it keeps making these kinds of improvements. 

Wide angle shots from the iPhone 12 Pro Max display slightly better sharpness, lower noise and better color rendition than the iPhone 12 Pro and much more improvement from the iPhone 11 Pro. In bright conditions you will be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two iPhone 12 models but if you’re on the lookout the signs are there. Better stabilization when handheld in open shade, better noise levels in dimmer areas and slightly improved detail sharpness. 

The iPhone 12 Pro already delivers impressive results year on year, but the iPhone 12 Pro Max leapfrogs it within the same generation. It’s the most impressive gain Apple’s ever had in a model year, image wise. The iPhone 8 Plus and the introduction of Apple’s vision of a blended camera array was forward looking, but even then image quality was pretty much parity with the smaller models that year. 

A very significant jump this year. Can’t wait for this camera to trickle down the lineup.

LiDAR. I haven’t really mentioned LiDAR benefits yet, but I went over them extensively in my iPhone 12 Pro review, so I’ll cite them here.

LiDAR is an iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max only feature. It enables faster auto-focus lock-in in low light scenarios as well as making Portrait Mode possible on the Wide lens in Night Mode shots. 

First, the auto-focus is insanely fast in low light. The image above is what is happening, invisibly, to enable that. The LiDAR array constantly scans the scene with an active grid of infrared light, producing depth and scene information that the camera can use to focus. 

In practice, what you’ll see is that the camera snaps to focus quickly in dark situations where you would normally find it very difficult to get a lock at all. The LiDAR-assisted low light Portrait Mode is very impressive, but it only works with the Wide lens. This means that if you are trying to capture a portrait and it’s too dark, you’ll get an on-screen prompt that asks you to zoom out. 

These Night  Mode portraits are demonstrably better looking than the standard portrait mode of the iPhone 11 because those have to be shot with the telephoto, meaning a smaller, darker aperture. They also do not have the benefit of the brighter sensor or LiDAR helping to separate the subject from the background — something that gets insanely tough to do in low light with just RGB sensors.

As a note, the LiDAR features will work great in situations under 5 meters along with Apple’s Neural Engine, to produce these low-light portraits. Out beyond that it’s not much use because of light falloff. 

Well lit Portrait Mode shots on the iPhone 12 Pro Max will still rely primarily on the information coming in through the lenses optically, rather than LiDAR. It’s simply not needed for the most part if there’s enough light.

The should I buy it workflow

I’m straight up copying a couple of sections for you now from my iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 mini reviews because the advice applies across all of these devices. Fair warning.

In my iPhone 12/12 Pro review I noted my rubric for selecting a personal device:

• The most compact and unobtrusive shape.
• The best camera that I can afford.

And this is the conclusion I came to at the time:

The iPhone 12 Pro is bested in the camera department by the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which has the biggest and best sensor Apple has yet created. (But its dimensions are similarly biggest.) The iPhone 12 has been precisely cloned in a smaller version with the iPhone 12 mini. By my simple decision-making matrix, either one of those are a better choice for me than either of the models I’ve tested. If the object becomes to find the best compromise between the two, the iPhone 12 Pro is the pick.

But now that I’ve had time with the Pro Max and the mini, I’ve been able to work up a little decision flow for you:

If you haven’t gathered it by now, I recommend the iPhone 12 Pro Max to two kinds of people: the ones who want the absolute best camera quality on a smartphone period and those who do the bulk of their work on a phone rather than on another kind of device. There is a distinct ‘fee’ that you pay in ergonomics to move to a Max iPhone. Two hands are just plain needed for some operations and single-handed moves are precarious at best. 

Of course, if you’re already self selected into the cult of Max then you’re probably just wondering if this new one is worth a jump from the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Shortly: maybe not. It’s great but it’s not light years better unless you’re doing photography on it. Anything older though and you’re in for a treat. It’s well made, well equipped and well priced. The storage upgrades are less expensive than ever and it’s really beautiful. 

Plus, the addition of the new wide angle to the iPhone 12 Pro Max makes this the best camera system Apple has ever made and quite possibly the best sub compact camera ever produced. I know, I know, that’s a strong statement but I think it’s supportable because the iPhone is best in class when it comes to smartphones, and no camera company on the planet is doing the kind of blending and computer vision Apple is doing. Though larger sensor compact cameras still obliterate the iPhone’s ability to shoot in low light situations, the progress over time of Apple’s ML-driven blended system.

A worthy upgrade, if you can pay the handling costs.

Japanese startup ispace, which is developing lander technology to support exploration of the Moon, is opening an office in Denver, the company announced today. The Colorado location was chosen because of its access to local aerospace engineering talent, and the plan is for the company to quickly staff up a full local engineering team. ispace also announced that it has hired Kursten O’Neill, a seven year SpaceX vet, who will oversee development of ispace’s next-generation lunar lander craft.

The U.S. expansion comes as ispace looks to work more closely together with NASA, both through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, where ispace is currently partnering with U.S.-based space specialist Draper on its bid to provide lunar lander transportation services for the agency. ispace also hopes to leverage its international footprint to help be a strategic linkage between the U.S. and its international partners more broadly across the Artemis program, which is NASA’s mission series intended to help humans return to the Moon and establish a more permanent presence there for continued science and research purposes.

ispace is set to launch its first lunar landers for its Mission 1 and Mission 2 operations, currently planned to take place starting with a debut launch in 2021. Its planned Mission 3 will be the first to carry its forthcoming next-generation lander, to be designed and manufactured in the U.S. by a team led by O’Neill, which will boast a larger footprint and greater payload capacity.

Cannabis was a big winner from the results of the United States’ election, and industry stocks are soaring on both the voting results and recent earnings. Companies such as Canopy Growth Corporation, Tilray, and Aurora Cannabis are seeing their valuations pop in pre-market trading as good news for the industry adds up.

Some companies are seeing double digital gains before markets officially open. Aurora Cannabis is up over 50% as of writing. This comes as stock market indexes worldwide are exploding on the news of a viable Covid-19 vaccine.

Recent earnings reports from Aurora Cannabis, Tilway, and Canopy Growth Corporation paint a picture of a reforming industry. Over the pandemic, these companies saw interest in cannabis soar while taking painful steps in reducing human labor costs. Some companies even reported a loss over the last financial quarter, but investors clearly see a bright future.

For example, Canopy Growth is up 10% in pre-market, and Tilway is up 25% in pre-market action. If these levels hold when the market opens, they would set 2020 levels and match the pop cannabis stocks received after going public in 2018.

Most cannabis companies are located in Canada, and America’s federal classification of cannabis hampers the Canadian companies’ ability to fully interact with the American consumer. That could change. Last week, cannabis legalization was on five state ballots and won each election. On Saturday, Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, and he previously stated that he would seek to reform cannabis legislation.

Legal cannabis has never looked more likely in the United States. Investors are clearly hopeful with a Democrat in the White House.

Over the coming months, Congress is set to take on several key cannabis issues, including allowing banks to interact with cannabis companies without fear of federal actions (SAFE Banking Act). Another bill (The STATES Act) would allow states to legalize cannabis without risk of federal interaction. And The MORE Act would remove cannabis from the federal Controlled Substance Act. Some in Washington expect the lame-duck congress to take up these issues before the end of the session.

As 5G slowly moves from being a theoretical to an active part of the coverage map for the mobile industry — if not for consumers themselves — companies that are helping carriers make the migration less painful and less costly are seeing a boost of attention.

In the latest development, Cellwize, a startup that’s built a platform to automate and optimize data for carriers to run 5G networks within multi-vendor environments, has raised $32 million — funding that it will use to continue expanding its business into more geographies and investing in R&D to bring more capabilities to its flagship CHIME platform.

The funding is notable because of the list of strategic companies doing the investing, as well as because of the amount of traction that Cellwize has had to date.

The Series B round is being co-led Intel Capital and Qualcomm Ventures LLC, and Verizon Ventures (which is part of Verizon, which also owns TechCrunch by way of Verizon Media) and Samsung Next, with existing shareholders also participating. That list includes Deutsche Telekom and Sonae, a Portuguese conglomerate that owns multiple brands in retail, financial services, telecoms and more.

That backing underscores Cellwize’s growth. The company — which is based in Israel with operations also in Dallas and Singapore — says it currently provides services to some 40 carriers (including Verizon, Telefonica and more), covering 16 countries, 3 million cell sites, and 800 million subscribers.

Cellwize is not disclosing its valuation but it has raised $56.5 million from investors to date.

5G holds a lot of promise for carriers, their vendors, handset makers and others in the mobile ecosystem: the belief is that faster and more efficient speeds for wireless data will unlock a new wave of services and usage and revenues from services for consumers and business, covering not just people but IoT networks, too.

Notwithstanding the concerns some have had with health risks, despite much of that theory being debunked over the years, one of the technical issues with 5G has been implementing it.

Migrating can be costly and laborious, not least because carriers will likely be running hybrid systems in the Radio Access Network (RAN, which controls how devices interface with carriers’ networks), where they will be managing legacy networks (eg, 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE) alongside 5G, and working with multiple vendors within 5G itself.

Cellwize positions its CHIME platform — which works as an all-in-one tool that covers configuring new 5G networks, optimizing and monitoring data on them, and also providing APIs for third-party developers to integrate with it — as the bridge to letting carriers operate in the more open-shop approach that is afforded by the move to 5G.

“While large companies have traditionally been more dominant in the RAN market, 5G is changing the landscape for how the entire mobile industry operates,” said Ofir Zemer, Cellwize’s CEO. “These traditional vendors usually offer solutions which plug into their own equipment, while not allowing third parties to connect, and this creates a closed and limited ecosystem. [But] the large operators also are not interested in being tied to one vendor: not technology-wise and not on the business side – as they identify this as an inhibitor to their own innovation.”

Cellwize provides an open platform that allows a carrier to plan, deploy and manage the RAN in that kind of multi-vendor ecosystem. “We have seen an extremely high demand for our solution and as 5G rollouts continue to increase globally, we expect the demand for our product will only continue to grow,” he added.

Previously, Zemer said that carriers would build their own products internally to manage data in the RAN, but these “struggle to support 5G.”

The competition element is not just lip service: the fact that both Intel and Qualcomm — competitors in key respects — are investing in this round underscores how Cellwize sees itself as a kind of Switzerland in mobile architecture. It also underscores that both view easy and deep integrations with its tech as something worth backing, given the priorities of each of their carrier customers.

“Over the last decade, Intel technologies have been instrumental in enabling the communications industry to transform networks with an agile and scalable infrastructure,” said David Flanagan, VP and senior MD at Intel Capital, in a statement. “With the challenges in managing the high complexity of radio access networks, we are encouraged by the opportunity in front of Cellwize to explore ways to utilize their AI-based automation capabilities as Intel brings the benefits of cloud architectures to service provider and private networks.”

“Qualcomm is at the forefront of 5G expansion, creating a robust ecosystem of technologies that will usher in the new era of connectivity,” added Merav Weinryb, Senior Director of Qualcomm Israel Ltd. and MD of Qualcomm Ventures Israel and Europe. “As a leader in RAN automation and orchestration, Cellwize plays an important role in 5G deployment. We are excited to support Cellwize through the Qualcomm Ventures’ 5G global ecosystem fund as they scale and expedite 5G adoption worldwide.”

And that is the key point. Right now there are precious few 5G deployments, and sometimes, when you read some the less shiny reports of 5G rollouts, you might be forgiven for feeling like it’s more marketing than reality at this point. But Zemer — who is not a co-founder (both of them have left the company) but has been with it since 2013, almost from the start — is sitting in on the meetings with carriers, and he believes that it won’t be long before all that tips.

“Within the next five years, approximately 75% of mobile connections will be powered by 5G, and 2.6 billion 5G mobile subscriptions will be serving 65% of the world’s population,” he said. “While 5G technology holds a tremendous amount of promise, the reality is that it is also hyper-complex, comprised of multiple technologies, architectures, bands, layers, and RAN/vRAN players. We are working with network operators around the world to help them overcome the challenges of rolling out and managing these next generation networks, by automating their entire RAN processes, allowing them to successfully deliver 5G to their customers.”

Stock markets worldwide are soaring on news that a vaccine candidate is 90% effective at preventing COVID-19, and could start coming to market in a matter of months. This is upending the stock market, sending futures shares shooting higher in pre-market trading. But while the euphoria is helping sectors that have taken punishment during COVID-19, not all companies are catching the same updraft.

Indeed, while shares of airlines and cruise companies are coming up like Lazarus, the value of some formerly-favored concerns like Zoom and Peloton are down sharply this morning.

The value of Peloton, which saw its value skyrocket as stuck-at-home exercisers favored its equipment, is off nearly 13%. And the value of Zoom, a popular video chatting service used by companies, is also down 13%. Online retailers are also taking hit including Etsy and Wayfair, which are seeing double digit drops. Even Amazon is down in pre-market trading, off 2.3% its latest close.

The morning is an odd inversion of prior trends. While the summer saw tech shares enjoy investor favor, it now appears that money is leaving tech shares for other, perhaps less-pricey stocks.

While it is too soon to know, it could that software stocks (the SaaS, cloud bucket TechCrunch pays close attention to) are about to see their multiples clipped as investors move their cash to a now-widened set of growth investments. If that happens, the technology industry would have to adapt to less-exuberant valuations for its public companies.

Any such move would impact startups, especially those in the later-stages that see their valuations track the public markets somewhat; late-stage startup investment has been active this year as investors could see liquidity options via IPOs and other mechanisms at high prices. If those prices drop, capital could tighten for tech startups.

Of course, it’s early. Things can, and may change. Investors could be trading too aggressively on what really is news that will take months to impact real economic activity. Today, however, feels like a new chapter in the 2020 markets story.

A press report emerged over the weekend claiming European lawmakers who are worried about terrorism are speeding towards a ban on end-to-end encryption. Spoiler: It’s a little more nuanced than that. Read on for our break down of what’s actually going on… 

Is Europe about to ban E2E Encryption?

No.

A report in the Austrian press yesterday appeared to suggest a ban incoming on end-to-end encryption which the headline linked to a recent terror attack in the country. In fact there have been discussions ongoing between Member States on the topic of encryption — and whether/how to regulate it — for several years now.

The report is based on a draft resolution of the Council of the European Union (CoEU), dated November 6. Per the draft document a final text, which could incorporate further amendments, is due to be presented to the Council on November 19 for adoption.

The CoEU decision-making body is comprised of representatives of Member States’ governments. It’s responsible for setting the political direction for the bloc however it’s the European Commission which is responsible for drafting legislation. So this is not in any way ‘draft EU legislation’.

One Commission insider we spoke to who’s involved in cyber security strategy couched the resolution as a “political gesture” — and most likely an empty one.

What does the CoEU draft resolution actually say? 

It starts by asserting the EU’s full support for “the development, implementation and use of strong encryption” — which would be a very odd position to hold if you also intended to ban E2EE.

Then it discusses “challenges” to public security that flow from criminals having easy access to the same technologies that are used to protect vital civic infrastructure — suggesting criminals can use E2EE to make “lawful” access to their communications “extremely challenging” or “practically impossible”.

This is of course a very familiar discussion in security circles — regularly fuelled by the ‘Five Eyes’ nations’ push for greater surveillance powers — and one which recurs repeatedly in relation to the technology industry owing to developments in communications tech. But note the CoEU does not say access to encrypted data is actually impossible.

Instead the resolution moves on to call for discussion of how to ensure the powers of competent security and criminal justice authorities can be preserved — while ensuring full respect for due legal process and EU rights and freedoms such as (notably the right to respect for private life and communications; and the right to the protection of personal data).

The document suggests a “better” balance should be created between these competing interests. “The principle of security through encryption and security despite encryption must be upheld in its entirety,” is how it’s phrased.

The specific call is for “governments, industry, research and academia… to work together to strategically create this balance”.

Does the draft resolution call for encryption to be backdoored?

No.

Indeed, the Council of Ministers specifically writes [emphasis ours]: “Competent authorities must be able to access data in a lawful and targeted manner, in full respect of fundamental rights and the data protection regime, while upholding cybersecurity. Technical solutions for gaining access to encrypted data must comply with the principles of legality, transparency, necessity and proportionality.”

So the push here — beyond the overarching political push to be seen to be doing something ‘pro-security’ — is for ways to improve targeted access to data but also that such targeting respect key EU principles that link to fundamental rights (like privacy of communications).

That doesn’t sum to an E2EE ban or backdoor.

But what does the resolution say about the legal framework? 

The Council of Ministers want the Commission to carry out a review of relevant existing regulations with relevance to ensure it’s all pulling in the same direction and therefore contributing to law enforcement being able to operate as efficiently as possible.

There is a mention of “potential technical solutions” at this point — but again the emphasis is on any such law enforcement aids supporting the use of their investigatory powers within domestic frameworks that comply with EU law — and a further emphasis on “upholding fundamental rights and preserving the advantages of encryption”. Security of information is a vital advantage of encryption previously discussed in the document so it’s essentially calling for preserving security without literally spelling that out. 

This portion of the draft document has several strike-throughs so looks most likely to be subject to wording changes. But for a signal of the direction of travel one bit of rewording emphasises the need for transparency should there be joint working with comms services providers on developing any “solutions”. (And a backdoor that everyone is told about obviously wouldn’t be a backdoor.)

Another suggestion in the draft calls for upskilling relevant authorities to boost their technical and operational expertise — aka more cyber training for police.

In a final section joint working to improve relevant co-ordination and expertise across the EU is again highlighted by the CoEU as key to bolstering authorities’ investigative capabilities.

There is also talk of developing “innovative approaches in view of new technologies” — but the conclusion makes a point of stating clearly: “there should be no single prescribed technical solution to provide access to encrypted data”. Aka no golden key/universal backdoor.

So there’s nothing to be worried about then? 

Well, the Commission may feel some pressure over the issue as it works on its new cyber strategy so it could get some political push on specific policy ideas — although we’re unlikely to see anything much on this front before next year. The CoEU isn’t setting out any policy ideas yet. At most it’s asking for help formulating some.

TechCrunch spoke to Dr Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity researcher and consultant based in Europe, to get his thoughts on the draft resolution. He agreed there’s no broadside against E2EE in the draft, nor any near-term prospect of legislation flowing from it. Indeed, he suggested the CoEU appears not to know what to do — hence looking to outside experts in academic and industry for help.

“First, there is no talk of backdoors. The message sets things clearly with respect to encryption being important for cybersecurity and privacy,” he told us. “As for the topic of this document, it is a long-term process in the exploratory phase now. Problems and ideas are identified. Nothing will happen immediately.

“It’s not getting even near to banning E2EE. It appears they do not know what to do exactly. So among the ideas is to perhaps set up a ‘high level expert group’ — the document speaks about engaging ‘academia’. This process is sometimes initiated by the Commission to identify ‘recommendations’ which may or may not be used in the policy process. It would then revolve around who would get to be admitted to such a group, and this varies a lot.

“For example the AI group was seen as quite reasonable, while the other dedicated one on disinformation was in fact geared towards the EU media figures rather than researchers or concrete expertise. We do not know where all this will lead.”

Olejnik expressed doubt that the Council could drive legislation on its own in this case, given the complexity involved. “It’s too premature to speak of any legislation,” he said. “Legislative process in the EU can be quite complex to understand but the EU Council would be unable to pull such a complex thing on their own.”

But he did highlight the CoEU’s coining of the phrase ‘security despite encryption’ as a noteworthy development — suggesting it’s unclear where this novel framing might lead in policy terms. So, as ever, the security debate around encryption demands a close eye.

“What I find of particular importance is coining the term ‘security despite encryption’. It is both unfortunate and ingenious. But the problem with this technology policy term is that it may consciously blend policy understanding of (physical?) security with technology security, as guaranteed today by encryption. This puts the two in direct opposition,” he said, adding: “Where the fallout would lead is anyone’s guess. I believe this process is far from over.”

But couldn’t there be a push to introduce some kind of ‘lawful intercept mechanism’ across the EU?

There would be huge challenges to such a step given all the EU legal principles and rights that any mechanism would need to respect.

The CoEU’s draft resolution reiterates this multiple times — highlighting the need for security activity to respect fundamental rights like privacy of communications and principles of legality, transparency, necessity and proportionality, for example.

Domestic surveillance laws in several EU Member States have also recently been found falling short in this regard by Europe’s highest court — so there would be a clear path to challenging any security overreach in the courts.

That means that even if some kind of intercept mechanism could be pushed through an EU legislative process, via enough political will to drive it, there’s no doubt it would face fierce legal challenge and the prospect of being unpicked by the courts.

Asked for a view on the notion put forward in the draft resolution — of seeking a “better” balance between security and privacy — and whether it might be a push towards something like the ‘ghost protocol’ advocated by GCHQ in recent years as an “exceptional access mechanism” (but which critics argue would both undermine user trust and introduce a blanket security risk that’s all but equivalent to a backdoor) — Olejnik told us: “Undermining encryption is a tricky territory because modern technology goes in a direction of more security, not less. In modern security ecosystems it would be hard to imagine a lawful intercept functionality known from the telecommunication infrastructure. For private business it’s also a question of trust. Can the individual users freely move their social interactions online even further? It’s a question measured in billions of dollars.”

The COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech has shown to be effective blocking vaccine in 90 percent of participants in its Phase 3 clinical trial, the companies announced on Monday. That’s based on data analyzed by an external, independent committee assigned to check the results of the trial, and reflects only early results from the trial, and not the final verified result, but it’s still extremely promising news for progress towards a viable and more broadly available vaccine.

Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine candidate is an mRNA-based vaccine, which is a newer technology that many companies pursued for COVID-19 in part because it offers some advantages in pace of development and potential efficacy. These results from the test were based on an equable case total of 94 confirmed COVID-19 cases among study participants – passing the minimum threshold agreed to by the companies and the FDA of 62 confirmed cases for a proper, scientifically rigorous assessment.

The Phase 3 trial conducted by the companies included 43,358 participants, and Pfizer reports “no serious safety concerns have been observed” thus far in addition to the positive prevention rate. Based on this early data, individuals who receive the vaccine are protected at 28 days after first dose, and the vaccine uses a two-dose process.

There is still additional safety testing and continued studies to conduct, with the companies estimating that two full months of safety data (which is what the FDA requires for Emergency Use Authorization) will be available in the third week of this month. Participants will also be monitored for two full years after they receive their second and final dose in order to test for long-term effects. Pfizer still thinks that it can produce up to 50 million doses of its vaccine by the end of this year, and as many as 1.3 billion doses through 2021.

Full data from this trial still need to undergo peer-review by other researchers and scientific publications, but this is definitely the most promising and clearly positive news yet from the vaccine development front, and could mean that large-scale distribution of a vaccine begins even before the end of 2020 if all goes well.

The COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech has shown to be effective blocking vaccine in 90 percent of participants in its Phase 3 clinical trial, the companies announced on Monday. That’s based on data analyzed by an external, independent committee assigned to check the results of the trial, and reflects only early results from the trial, and not the final verified result, but it’s still extremely promising news for progress towards a viable and more broadly available vaccine.

Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine candidate is an mRNA-based vaccine, which is a newer technology that many companies pursued for COVID-19 in part because it offers some advantages in pace of development and potential efficacy. These results from the test were based on an equable case total of 94 confirmed COVID-19 cases among study participants – passing the minimum threshold agreed to by the companies and the FDA of 62 confirmed cases for a proper, scientifically rigorous assessment.

The Phase 3 trial conducted by the companies included 43,358 participants, and Pfizer reports “no serious safety concerns have been observed” thus far in addition to the positive prevention rate. Based on this early data, individuals who receive the vaccine are protected at 28 days after first dose, and the vaccine uses a two-dose process.

There is still additional safety testing and continued studies to conduct, with the companies estimating that two full months of safety data (which is what the FDA requires for Emergency Use Authorization) will be available in the third week of this month. Participants will also be monitored for two full years after they receive their second and final dose in order to test for long-term effects. Pfizer still thinks that it can produce up to 50 million doses of its vaccine by the end of this year, and as many as 1.3 billion doses through 2021.

Full data from this trial still need to undergo peer-review by other researchers and scientific publications, but this is definitely the most promising and clearly positive news yet from the vaccine development front, and could mean that large-scale distribution of a vaccine begins even before the end of 2020 if all goes well.