Category: UNCATEGORIZED

There’s a global shortage of available protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies for use by frontline responders working to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus, and the Frontline Responders Fund wants to channel donations to help address that shortage. The fund, which is seeking public donations via GoFundMe, will use all proceeds to cover the costs of transportation of these crucial supplies to the hospitals, clinics and public agencies that need them most.

Flexport is facilitating the deliveries via their supply chain management platform and services, and are receiving donations via their grant making partner Charities Add Foundation of America (CAF), which facilitates the acceptance of charitable donations for Flexport.org, Flexport’s NGO for social good projects.

Already, Flexport has been taking steps to get equipment where it’s needed most: last week, it got 60,000 surgical masks, 34,000 gloves, 2,000 surgical gowns and 50 thermometers from MedShare to San Francisco’s Department of Public Health. But the organization wants to do more, both for SF and for other cites in that are looking for ways to shore up their own supplies.

“My neighbor is on the board of supervisors and she told me the city really needed help,” Petersen said via email earlier this week. “Naturally our team stepped in and applied our knowledge of supply chains and logistics plus a long standing partnership with MedShare.org to get them PPE quickly. Now we’re scaling that effort to get more supplies for SF as well as other cities and hospitals that are also in desperate need.”

The funds made available through this fundraising effort will go to securing not only PPE, but also “testing kits, thermometers, ventilators and medicines,” according to the project’s GoFundMe page, based on what medical service providers deem to be highest priority in terms of need.

Petersen says that effectively all of his time now is focused on logistics to support these ongoing efforts, and it looks like it’ll remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Other organizations, including Apple, and now SoftBank, have been donating large volumes of N95 respirators, a key piece of frontline protective equipment. Flexport’s work could facilitate continued supply, leveraging their supply chain relationships, to ensure that equipment makes its way to frontline staff as fast as it’s able to be produced.

Donations can be made directly through the fund’s GoFundMe page, and the total raised is sitting at just under $3 million as of this writing – helped in large part by sizeable donations from Silicon Valley leaders including Paul Graham, Jack Dorsey and Ron Conway, as well as celebrities including Edward Norton and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Snapchat’s location sharing app acquisition Zenly has gamified shelter-in-place during the COVID-19 outbreak. Today the app launched its Stay At Home challenge that shows a leaderboard of which friends have spent the most percentage of the last three days in their homes. Users can see who’s social distancing the best and share stickers of the scoreboard and coronavirus prevention tips to Snapchat, Instagram, and other apps.

Location apps like Zenly typically encourage users to go out and explore the world suddenly lost most of their purpose due to widespread order for people to self-quarantine. They even might have incentivized people to disobey those orders. But by building a game around isolation, Zenly could make it cool to show off how you’re NOT grabbing coffee, visiting friends, or taking a walk down Main St.

Zenly’s co-founder announced the feature this morning, and credited a tweet I posted on March 15th calling for developers to build a gamified quarantine app.

Apple is updating its privacy policy for Apple Card to enable sharing more anonymized data with Goldman Sachs, its financial partner. Apple’s reasoning here is that this will make it able to do a better job of assigning credit to new customers.

The data is aggregate and anonymized, and there is an opt-out for new customers.

Three things are happening here:

• Apple is changing the privacy policy for Apple Card with iOS to share a richer, but still anonymized credit assignment model with Goldman Sachs in order to expand the kind of user that might be able to secure credit.
• There is also a beefed up fallback method to share more personal data on an opt-in basis with Goldman Sachs if you do not at first get approved. Things like purchase history of Apple products, when you created your Apple ID and how much you spend with Apple. This has always existed and you may have seen it if the default modeling rejected your Apple Card application — it has a few more data points now but it is still very clearly opt-in with a large share button.
• Apple is also finally adding detail to its internal transactions. You no longer have to wonder what that random charge labeled Apple Services is for, you’ll get detail on the Hillary Duff box set or Gambino album you purchased right in the list inside Wallet.

As a side effect of the Apple Card policy evolving here it’s also being split off from the Apple Pay privacy policy. Much of the language is either identical or nearly so, but this allows Apple to make changes like the ones above to Apple Card without having to interleave that with the Apple Pay policy — as not all Apple Pay customers are Apple Card customers.

The new policy appears in iOS 13.4 updates but the opt-in sharing of data points will not immediately roll out for new Apple Card users and will begin appearing later.

Here is the additional language that is appearing in the Apple Card privacy notice related to data sharing, with some sections highlighted by us:

“You may be eligible for certain Apple Card programs provided by Goldman Sachs based on the information provided as part of your application. Apple may know whether you receive the invitation to participate and whether you accept or decline the invitation, and may share that information with Goldman Sachs to effectuate the program. Apple will not know additional details about your participation in the program.

Apple may use information about your account with Apple, such as the fact that you have Apple Card, for internal research and analytics purposes, such as financial forecasting. Apple may also use information about your relationship with Apple, such as what Apple products you have purchased, how long you have had your Apple ID, and how often you transact with Apple, to improve Apple Card by helping to identify Apple metrics that may assist Goldman Sachs in improving credit decisioning. No personally identifiable information about your relationship with Apple will be shared with Goldman Sachs to identify the relevant Apple metrics. You can opt out of this use or your Apple relationship information by emailing our privacy team at dpo@apple.com with the subject line “Apple Relationship Data and Apple Card.” Applicants and cardholders may be able to choose to share the identified metrics with Goldman Sachs for re-evaluation of their offer of credit or to increase their credit line. Apple may share information about your relationship with Apple with our service providers, who are obligated to handle the information consistent with this notice and Apple instructions, are required to use reasonable security measures to protect any personal information received, and must delete the personal information as soon as they have completed the services.”

Some thoughts on all of this.

The fact that Apple is sharing a new anonymized, non-personally identifiable information (PII), customer model with Goldman likely engenders two valid responses.

First, there is more data being shared here than there was before, which is always something that should be examined closely, and all of us should be as cognizant as possible about how much information gets traded around about us. That said, your average co-branded card offer (say an airline card or retailer card) is controlled nearly entirely by the financial services side of that equation (basically the credit card companies decide what data they get and how).

Apple’s deal with Goldman Sachs is unique in a lot of ways, not the least of which is that Apple has controlled the flow of data from customers to Goldman very tightly from the beginning. Evidenced by affordances it continues to offer like skipping your March payment to Apple Card without incurring interest. This new arrangement outlined in the privacy policy does not share any PII unless there is an opt-in, and even allows an opt-out of the anonymized model share.

I cannot stress enough how rare that is in financial products, especially credit cards. Most cards take all of the above information and much more in their approval process, and they don’t do any work beyond what is required by regulatory law to inform you of that. Apple is doing more than most.

THAT SAID. I do wish that the opt-out of the anonymized data model was presented in the flow of normal signup, rather than existing as an email address in the privacy policy. I know why this is, because the model is likely far more effective and a lot more people will likely get approved for an Apple Card using it.

But in keeping with the stated Apple goals of protecting user privacy and making the policy as transparent as possible I would prefer that they find a long-term solution that communicates all of those factors to the user clearly and then offers them the ability to risk non-approval but limiting data share.

The idea behind the new model sharing and the secondary opt-in disclosure of 9 key bits of actually personal information about your purchase history and other things is that Apple will be able to offer credit to people who may be automatically rejected under the old way of doing things. And, out beyond that, it will be able to build tools that help customers to manage debt and credit more accurately and transparently. Especially those new to credit.

Any time an agreement changes to enable more data to flow my eyebrows arch. But there is a pretty straight line to be drawn here between the way that Apple transparently and aggressively helps users to not pay interest on Apple Card and the potential for more useful financial product enhancements to Apple Card down the line.

If you’ve ever looked at a credit card statement you know that it can often be difficult to ascertain exactly how much you need to pay at any given time to avoid interest. In the Apple Card interface it’s insanely clear exactly how and when to pay so that you don’t get charged. Most of the industry follows practices that prey on behavioral norms — people will pay the minimum payment by default because that’s what seems logical, rather than paying what is most healthy for them to pay.

My hope here is that the additional modeling makes room for more of these kinds of product decisions for Apple Card down the line. But, my eyes are up and yours should be too. Check the policy, opt-out if it makes sense to you and always be aware of the data you’re sharing, who with and what they plan to use it for.

Ford said Tuesday won’t restart its factories in the U.S., Canada and Mexico on Monday, March 30 as the automaker had originally planned.

The company, which suspended production at its North American factories due to the continued spread of COVID-19, has decided not to restart operations in light of various governments’ orders to stay and work from home, Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s president of North America said in a statement.

“We are assessing various options and working with union leaders – including the United Auto Workers and Unifor – on the optimal timing for resuming vehicle production, keeping the well-being of our workforce top of mind,” Galhotra added.

Ford’s closures in North America follows a decision to shutter factories in Cologne and Saarlouis in Germany as well as its Craiova facility in Romania. Earlier this week, Ford asked all salaried employees — except those performing business critical roles that can’t be done off site —to work remotely until further notice.

On March 15, the UAW along with GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles formed a coronavirus task force to work on ways to protect worker and lessen the spread of the disease.

GM and FCA also suspended operations last week. Those automakers haven’t said if they will restart production March 30.

Ranker, an online publisher that turns crowdsourced lists and fan-rankings into a data business, is now turning its attention to the world of streaming services. The company this week launched a new app, Watchworthy, that helps you find something new to watch across TV networks and over 200 streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Apple TV+, and many more.

Ranker, as you may already know, is the website that always pops up in search results when you’re looking for some sort of “best of” round-up — whether that’s in entertainment, music, sports, culture, history or across other topics. On the site, online visitors can vote on their favorites in categories as broad as the “best hip-hop artists” or as niche as the “best coconut oil brands.”

Ranker’s TV lists are among its more popular categories and one that makes the most sense for turning into an app. And right now, everyone is looking for something new to watch as we’re stuck indoors due to the COVID-19 health crisis.

While there are already a number of apps promising to offer TV recommendations — like Reelgood, TV Time, Yidio, and JustWatch, for example —  Watchworthy’s advantage is Ranker’s data powering its recommendations. Its machine-learning platform applies first-party correlation data it has amassed over a decade from one billion votes on Ranker.com. As the company explains, this makes its data more “statistically relevant.”

For example, its data indicates that “Better Call Saul” fans tend to like other gritty, dark dramas like “House of Cards,” “Ray Donovan,” and “True Detective” but also more cerebral comedies like “Nathan for You” and “High Maintenance.”

To figure out what sort of TV programs interest you, Watchworthy at first launch jumps you into a rating experience to provide it with your data. In 60 seconds, you fly through a ratings feature that uses a Tinder-like interface where a right swipe is a “like” and a left swipe is a “dislike” (and up is “not sure”). After you thumbs up and down a selection of shows, you can begin to browse your recommendations.

In my test, this initial set of recommendations was already above average compared with some of the other apps I’ve tried. Your mileage may vary, of course, as it’s a highly personalized experience. Watchworthy may not have offered dozens of precise matches to my tastes at first, but it did remind me of several shows I had seen in passing and thought at some point I might like to try, as well as a few new discoveries.

 

Its suggestions are ranked by a “worthy” score that indicates the likelihood that the show is worthy of your time. You can also filter the list of recommendations by service, genre, runtime, and MPAA ratings.

The app got a little better after spending a little more time to like and dislike more shows and to personalize it as to which streaming services I was using. This allowed me to integrate recommendations from more sources — like HBO, Apple TV+, Disney+, Showtime, and others.

However, I did get to the point where liking and disliking didn’t refine my recommendations further, so there is a limit to what Watchworthy can do. I also found the app to be a little lacking on the reality and nonfiction side of things. It tended to push recommendations of scripted shows, despite my having “liked” shows such as “The Great British Bake Off,” “Windy City Rehab,” and “Queer Eye,” among others.

As you find shows you like in the app’s recommendations, you can add them to the universal watchlist in the app for easy access.

 

You can also create an account to save your data. Watchworthy at launch supports Apple’s private sign-in option, as well as Google, Facebook, and email.

The homepage of the app also integrates Ranker’s existing TV lists. The website has over 50,000 of these, but the app isn’t an endless scroll. Instead, it updates the home page with relevant, timely content. For example, today’s lists include “Shows for Self Quarantine,” “Shows to Distract You,” “Funniest Shows on Netflix,” “Best Family Shows on Amazon Prime,” and other round-ups.

The new app serves not only as a discovery tool for TV viewers, cord-cutters, and binge-watchers, but also as fuel for Ranker’s data collection business. Ranker licenses its data and insights to third-parties, like marketers, advertisers, researchers, developers, and service providers. However, its data isn’t focused on demographics so much as it is on “psychographics” — meaning, your tastes. Ranker isn’t asking you for private information, only what you like.

In a way, Watchworthy serves as a demo app of what can be done with Ranker’s psychographic insights, in this case, for TV viewers. But the same sort of system could be built for other categories, like music, cooking, film, travel, and more.

The company says this year it will also make its Watchworthy app available to connected devices, like Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV. It also plans to add movie recommendations and shared watchlists.

Watchworthy is a free download on iOS with Android to come. On any mobile device, it works from watchworthy.app.

 

Google today announced a small but important addition to its travel search site on both mobile and desktop.

When you search for flights, hotels and activities, the site will now highlight active travel advisories for your destination. In addition, now that most airlines have changed their flight change and cancellation policies in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, Google has added a direct link to your airline’s policies to the flight results page, too.

These are obviously minor changes but sadly necessary ones. And while everybody is likely aware of the State Department’s current Level 4 ‘Do Not Travel‘ advisory, at some point in the next few months, we’ll get to a point where those advisories will change for some regions while they may still be in place for others.

As for the airlines, it’s worth noting how much their response to the coronavirus pandemic is still in flux. A number of companies have now extended their cancellation policies to cover all flights booked for May, for example. And while most airlines are still operating at least a limited flight schedule for the time being, that could easily change in the coming weeks as the industry tries to grapple with the fallout of this crisis.

To keep up with the policy changes across airlines, Google also published a new document on its help center with links to all of these policies for most major airlines, too.

Disney+ launches in seven European countries, Microsoft admits to a “critical” Windows security flaw and we review the new iPad Pro. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 24, 2020.

1. Using 25% lower bandwidth, Disney+ launches in UK, Ireland and 5 other European countries, France to come online April 7

As expected, Disney announced that it is officially launching its streaming service across seven markets in Europe — but doing so using reduced bandwidth given the strain on broadband networks as more people are staying home because of the coronavirus pandemic.

So starting today, Disney+ will be live in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland; Disney also confirmed a delayed debut in France on April 7. This is the largest multi-country launch for the service so far.

2. Microsoft says hackers are attacking Windows users with a new unpatched bug

The security flaw, which Microsoft deems “critical” — its highest severity rating — is found in how Windows handles and renders fonts, according to the advisory posted Monday. The bug can be exploited by tricking a victim into opening a malicious document. Once the document is opened — or viewed in Windows Preview — an attacker can remotely run malware, such as ransomware, on a vulnerable device.

3. Review: 100,000 miles and one week with an iPad Pro

Matthew Panzarino has been using an iPad Pro as his main portable work machine for the past 18 months. This week, he tried out the latest version of the device, concluding that it offers an attractive refresh for new buyers — but not for owners of the 2018 model.

4. Ford, 3M, GE and the UAW to build respirators, ventilators and faceshields for coronavirus fight

Ford has announced the details of its current manufacturing efforts around building much-needed medical supplies for frontline healthcare workers and COVID-19 patients. Its efforts include building Powered Air-Purifying Respirators with partner 3M.

5. Where top VCs are investing in D2C

The TechCrunch team was curious —especially in the wake of the troubled Casper IPO — about how investor sentiment might have shifted and what venture capitalists are looking for in the category, so we asked some smart investors. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Revolut launches its neobank in the US

Starting today, anybody in the U.S. can sign up and get a Revolut debit card. For this launch, Revolut has partnered with Metropolitan Commercial Bank for the banking infrastructure — deposits are FDIC-insured up to $250,000.

7. Mozilla expands its partnership with ad-free subscription service Scroll

Firefox Better Web with Scroll combines the tracking protection built into Mozilla’s Firefox browser with the ad-free browsing experience offered by Scroll. Anyone in the United States who’s interested in trying this out can sign up for a Firefox account and install the Better Web with Scroll extension.

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

Following the announcement that it’s committing $25 million in waived fees and free services to support local businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Yelp announced a new effort this morning: a partnership with GoFundMe that will bring Donate buttons to businesses’ Yelp profiles.

Yelp says that its data shows that U.S. consumer interest in restaurants has fallen 67% since March 10, while businesses like yoga studios and breweries have seen large decreases of 78% and 85%, respectively. That’s a natural and proper response to the need for social distancing, but it leaves many business owners in dire straits.

There have been some ad hoc efforts around buying gift cards as a way to support local businesses, but GoFundMe campaigns offer a more direct and straightforward tool for — as Yelp puts it — “loyal customers [who] want to help them weather this unprecedented crisis and are looking for ways to make an immediate impact.” (I’ve also seen campaigns designed to support a businesses’ employees or an entire industry of workers.)

Under this new partnership, GoFundMe campaigns will automatically appear on Yelp profiles for restaurants, nightlife, beauty and fitness and active life businesses. The companies also say that the Yelp Foundation and GoFundMe will match up to $1 million in donations, by making $500 matching grants for businesses that raise at least $500 on their GoFundMe.

“In addition to our recently announced relief for local businesses, this is another piece of our larger effort to respond to the widespread impact of this pandemic, and we’re continuing to explore different ways to address the challenges faced by our community,” Yelp says.

Rocket launch startup Astra, which had been attempting to claim DARPA’s prize for successful demonstration of flexible space launch capabilities until earlier this month, will not be moving forward with an attempted flight of its launch vehicle this week as planned. The company’s “One of Three” rocket ran into an “anomaly” during pre-launch testing in preparation for its flight this week, and the schedule for a make-up launch are currently is currently up in the air.

“Astra’s launch vehicle “One of Three” suffered an anomaly following an otherwise successful day of testing in Kodiak in preparation for a launch this week,” explained Astra CEO and founder Chris Kemp via email. “Fortunately, our own hardware was the only thing harmed, and our team is already hard at work to determine the root cause so that we can improve the vehicle’s design. As a result of yesterday’s anomaly we will no longer be attempting a launch this week. We do intend to attempt another launch from Kodiak once conditions with coronavirus improve and we have resolved the cause of yesterday’s incident.”

Astra’s launches are set to take off from Kodiak Launch Complex, which is located a the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska. The company had challenges with weather conditions leading up to its attempts to win the $2 million DARPA prize, the deadline for each expired at the beginning of March, but the anomaly yesterday had to do with the vehicle hardware itself, and not external conditions. Local news additionally reported this morning that while the emergency response triggered by the anomaly had ended, the “areas is still hazardous and should be avoided” according to Alaska Aerospace CEO Mark Lester.

Kemp also cited the current coronavirus crisis in his statement to TechCrunch, and while that doesn’t look like it contributed to any technical issues, the ongoing global pandemic definitely seems likely to impact any attempted work that would involve repairs or rescheduling the launch at this time.

A new annual survey taken before the current COVID-19 crisis led to restrictions of movement in much of the U.S. suggests good news for Amazon, Facebook’s dominance unthreatened and continued growth in podcasting.

Edison Research and Triton Digital released their annual Infinite Dial survey last week, compiling data on consumers’ use of smart speakers, podcasts, music streaming and social media from 1,500 people (aged 12 and older) to compare year-over-year changes. Here are a few interesting findings:

Voice assistants and smart speakers

Sixty-two percent said they use a voice-based virtual assistant, most commonly via a phone or a computer. There has been a lot written about interactive voice as the next major medium for human-computer interaction after mobile phones, so it’s noteworthy to see that use of the technology is still associated with personal computing devices rather than hands-free smart speakers placed in the surrounding environment.

Smart speaker ownership did increase to 27% of respondents, up from 24% in 2019, even though respondents owned an average 2.2 speakers. In fact, the cohort that owned three or more speakers increased from one-quarter to one-third of owners in just a year, with Amazon Alexa continuing to dominate market share.