Category: UNCATEGORIZED

NASA and SpaceX issued a media accreditation invitation on Wednesday for their Demonstration Mission 2 (aka Demo-2) commercial crew launch – the first in the commercial crew program that will carry actual astronauts to space. The invite includes the current proposed timeframe for the mission, listed as no “no earlier than mid-to-late May.”

Reports from earlier in the year had pegged the launch window for May, with the possibility that SpaceX and NASA could move that to as early as April, or as late as June, depending on the preparedness of the spacecraft and crew. SpaceX was reportedly early on readying the Crew Dragon spacecraft that would be flying the mission, but NASA also changed the mission parameters to include a longer stay at the International Space Station for the crew going up on the demo mission, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

This will be the first time ever that astronauts fly aboard a SpaceX spacecraft, and the first crewed mission for the commercial crew program, through which NASA is working with private company launch operators to return human spaceflight capabilities to American soil. All current astronaut transportation to and from the International Space Station is accomplished through a partnership with Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, which flies crews using its Soyuz spacecraft.

So far, NASA and SpaceX haven’t seemed to be anticipating much of a change to the timing of their first crewed Dragon mission in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This invitation from NASA is the most detailed confirmation yet that the mission is still on as of right now, and tracking towards a launch window that seems unchanged from plans prior to the implementation of strict social distancing and isolation measures as the COVID-19 epidemic flared across the U.S.

NASA recently moved all of its facilities to a ‘Stage 3’ state of contingency operation, which means all employees are on mandatory telework unless they’re required to be physically present in office for mission-related activity. NASA’s Ames facility has been escalated to Stage 4, because of the ‘shelter-in-place’ order in effect in the California county in which it resides, which means that the facility is closed and only telework is permitted.

In the invitation issued to media today, NASA says that it’s “proactively monitoring the coronavirus (COVID-19) situation as it evolves” and will “communicate any updates that may impact mission planing or media access, as they become available.” The agency is also taking extra precautions to protect the health of Hurley and Behnken, in addition to standard isolation procedures already in place to prevent them from getting sick ahead of a spaceflight mission.

The New York Stock Exchange will close its trading floor on Monday, March 23 and fully move to electronic trading, the exchange’s operator Intercontinental Exchange announced today.

The actual physical locations that will close are the NYSE equities trading floor in New York, the NYSE American Options trading floor in New York and the NYSE Arca Options trading floor in San Francisco.

The organization says it took this step as a precautionary step to protect the health of traders and employees on the floor. So far, two people who worked on the floor have tested positive for COVID-19, though they hadn’t been in the building this week, Stacey Cunningham, President of the New York Stock Exchange, said on CNBC today.

“NYSE’s trading floors provide unique value to issuers and investors, but our markets are fully capable of operating in an all-electronic fashion to serve all participants, and we will proceed in that manner until we can re-open our trading floors to our members,” said Cunningham in the announcement. “While we are taking the precautionary step of closing the trading floors, we continue to firmly believe the markets should remain open and accessible to investors. All NYSE markets will continue to operate under normal trading hours despite the closure of the trading floors.”

This shouldn’t have any real influence on how the stock market functions. Outside of the United States, there are few traditional trading floors left and electronic trading already accounts for the vast majority of trades anyway. Nadaq, too, is a fully electronic stock exchange. The NYSE does note that there are some floor broker order types that will be unavailable, though, and didn’t provide any guidance for when it expects to reopen the trading floor.

Staff at telecommunications giant Charter Communications are still having to work from corporate offices — against the advice from the federal government — despite at least one employee testing positive for coronavirus and other staff coming into contact with another confirmed case.

The phone and internet giant, which owns the Spectrum brand, has doubled down in the past week on its policy of disallowing its 15,000 office-based employees to work from home, prompting one engineer to quit over fears he would contract the illness.

Dozens of other Charter employees have contacted TechCrunch in the past few days with concerns about their current working conditions. Current government advice is to avoid gatherings of 10 people or more and for businesses to allow employees to work from home where possible.

The employees we spoke to said that while Charter has the means to allow staff to work from home, executives are reluctant to relax the policy. Charter chief executive Tom Rutledge said in an internal email to staff this week that employees are “more effective from the office.”

Charter employees say they are being forced to use their sick leave if they are exhibiting symptoms. Other companies, including AT&T and Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) are allowing staff to work from home.

Internal emails and correspondence sent by multiple Charter employees, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution from the company, show several staff in offices across the U.S. have shown symptoms and have been tested for the coronavirus strain, known as COVID-19.

An employee at a call center in Akron, Ohio also tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, according to another employee. The employee said that they fear others have been exposed to the virus because the infected employee had been forced to come into the office all week.

Another email sent to staff in Charlotte, N.C., said an employee had self-isolated after reporting coronavirus symptoms. It’s not known if the employee has tested positive. Gizmodo reported Wednesday that an employee at one of Charter’s offices in San Diego had undergone testing for COVID-19. The test results were also not released.

But staff at Charter’s office in New York were told to still come into work, despite a positive COVID-19 case in the building. An email sent on Wednesday to some employees in the New York office said a tenant on another floor, who used the same elevator banks as Charter employees, tested positive for COVID-19. The tenant was last in the building on March 5, according to a building notice seen by TechCrunch.

Some staff only found out about the positive result when “one of the good guys posted it in the elevator so others would see,” according to one employee.

Cameron Blanchard, a spokesperson for Charter, declined to comment on individual employee matters, and claimed the company was “following CDC guidelines,” and repeated previously made remarks that the company is “reviewing continuity plans daily” and “will adjust accordingly.”

The spokesperson also asked TechCrunch not to rely on “rumors” or “anonymous sources.” (The spokesperson declared this to be “off the record,” which requires both parties to agree to the terms in advance, but we are printing the reply as we were given no opportunity to reject.)

As it stands, there are more than 214,000 global cases of coronavirus, with some 7,700 reported cases in the United States.

Charter was not the only company this week accused of putting its staff at risk. This week, it was reported that Best Buy was forced to reduce the number of customers in its stores to prevent the spread of the virus after staff spoke out.

But where Best Buy changed its policy, Charter is standing firm.

One employee said that Charter was more preoccupied with preventing its staff from talking to the media. One internal email sent Wednesday and seen by TechCrunch said that employees should “not provide any info or engage in further discussion with media outlets or investors making inquiries.”

That employee said they were “disappointed in and ashamed” of how Charter is acting. “This will all come back to bite them in the ass eventually,” the employee said.

It was another brutal day on Wall Street as investors continue to come to grips with the new economic realities imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the S&P 500 are scraping near their lowest point in the last three years, brushing their lowest numbers since the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. The Nasdaq, while not down quite as sharply, is also following the the pack downward.

It seems there’s no herd immunity from a dark fiscal prognosis.

And another Presidential news conference invoking powers not called upon since the days of the Korean War did nothing to calm nervous investors. So the song remains the same, lots of volatility and no safe haven.

Here’re the numbers from the major American indices, as they wrapped the day:

• DJIA: plummeted, 1,334.86, or 6.29%, to 19,902.52
• S&P 500: slumped 130.88, or 5.17%, to 2,398.31
• Nasdaq Composite: sunk 344.94, or 4.70%, to 6,989.84

Adding in other assets, SaaS and cloud stocks were off 4.4% on the day, making them better than other tradable equities on the day, though they have, at times, taken worse hits than the broader market itself. Cryptocurrencies and other digital tokens are largely flat, having broken their fever and plateauing, at least temporarily.

A good question at this point is what good news would look like that’s sufficient to begin to rectify the situation; strong employment numbers would help, but with recent reporting concerning mass layoffs around the country that seems unlikely. Government stimulus is helping, but, again, not enough to keep the markets up.

In short just as it was hard to parse out what the bad thing would be that would trigger an inevitable selloff, it’s hard to pinpoint what might set things right.

While Hillary Clinton’s comments about Bernie Sanders (“Nobody likes him”) have prompted more headlines than anything else in Hulu’s “Hillary,” there’s a lot more to learn from the documentary.

Over the course of four-plus hours, “Hillary” traces Clinton’s life and career, with a particular focus on the 2016 — both the combative primary with Sanders and then the shocking loss to Donald Trump. It is, fundamentally, a sympathetic portrait, drawing on extensive interviews with Hillary and Bill Clinton, as well as friends, colleagues, family members and journalists.

The documentary acknowledges that Clinton has been criticized throughout her time in public life, but it usually (and convincingly) suggests that many of her detractors are motivated by good, old-fashioned misogyny. And while it can be hard to watch at times, it ends on hopeful note.

We review “Hillary” at the end of a packed mid-week episode of the Original Content podcast, which also includes a big reality TV catch-up, followed by a discussion of how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting TV production and movie distribution.

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

And if you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:

0:00 Intro
1:26 “Big Brother” coronavirus reveal
9:03 “The Bachelor” discussion (spoilers)
26:52 “Love Is Blind” follow-up (spoilers)
38:23 Coronavirus and TV production
41:58 Movie theater closures/streaming releases
48:02 “Hillary” review

Augmented reality still has Apple’s enthusiasm behind it, but can that keep the whole industry afloat?

On Wednesday, Apple debuted a new iPad Pro, the hallmark feature of which was a lidar time-of-flight sensor baked into the camera, which is designed to make augmented reality experiences more realistic and immersive. For most potential users, the inclusion is something of an oddity. Consumer AR apps are few and far between, and Apple has also been slow to bring AR functionality into its own stock apps.

For the AR industry, the hardware inclusion amounts to an industry gift, signaling once again that Apple is still committed to making an augmented reality future happen.

The company’s ARKit development platform has brought out some interesting use cases, but app developers have scored few resounding victories. The reasons why increasingly seem to have little to do with individual technical features of the development platform or camera hardware. Apple can keep improving both, but without some concerted integrations of AR functionality into the core of iOS or iPadOS, it’s unclear whether these little developer-focused feature bumps will make a dent. Consumers just don’t see anything they want yet.

AR startups have already been struggling and hardware efforts have largely cratered. The software platforms have had some success building what Apple hasn’t or won’t for niche enterprise customers, but as the economic realities shift, all bets are off.

I’m not sure how many days we are into this “15 days” thing. Frankly, I’m not really sure what day of the week it is. As we collectively lose our grip on reality and socialization and increasingly turn to technology to cope, a number of meditation apps are offering up content to free to help folks recenter admit a push to shelter in place.

Headspace was among the first to offer a plan. The popular app announced that it would be making its premium tier free for “all US healthcare professionals who work in public health settings,” a nice  nod to the first-responders who are among the hardest working and most emotionally wiped amid the pandemic.

Interested parties who qualify can redeemed free access to Headspace Plus through the end of 2020 by entering their National Provider Identifier (NPI) and email address on the service’s site.

Simple Habit this morning announced free premium memberships for “all people who are impacted by the pandemic and can no longer afford to pay.” Those who qualify need only email help [at] simplehabit.com and note that they’re in a precarious financial position due to the pandemic. Access includes free meditation collections through the end of April.

Calm CEO Michael Acton Smith told TechCrunch that the company is currently exploring ways it might help a strained community. In the meantime, the service is making a number of meditations available for free to users.

A number of yoga studios and exercise applications are offering similar services for the housebound.

Founders face many trials and tribulations when building their companies, from fundraising woes to visa challenges to product failures to company failures. 

And according to Kari Sulenes, “almost everybody who has built a company has a burnout story.” Her startup, Atlas, connects venture firms and startup founders to specialized therapy sessions. Plus, it views the silver linings of burnout stories: “There’s also a large number of people who have a burnout story who have an impact story that comes out of it.” 

More recently, as a response to the coronavirus outbreak, the company was hired by a number of venture capital firms to provide mental health services to portfolio companies. The uptick in business — that is, clients looking to provide founder-specialized therapy during uncertain times — makes Atlas projected to double its estimated revenue this year.   

We’ve interviewed VCs that, in the wake of the novel coronavirus disease, have told their startups to hold off putting excessive capital to work. Others said to keep your head down and work on the product. And some that say it is business as usual until the dry powder dries up. 

Beyond business economics, mental health remains largely unaddressed from the slew of issues that founders struggle with, oftentimes alone and in private. Atlas’ utilization sheds light on how the tech industry’s financial arm is prioritizing health. 

It’s just one data point, but it’s an important one, nonetheless.

Starting this week, Atlas is launching a small group founder program with the following firms: Primary VC, Corigin Ventures, SoGal Ventures, Spero Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Crosscut Ventures. 

Atlas is also working with the venture capital firm it spun out from in the first place: AlphaBridge VC. Sulenes, the founder and executive director, noted that while these firms were in prior communication with Atlas, the outbreak helped increase their business with the company (in other words, the world ending inspired the firms to bring its mental health resources out to its portfolio founders).

Atlas in action 

Here’s how small group sessions for founders will shape up: Atlas will hold a virtual group program that connects six to eight founders, mixed between all the portfolios of client venture firms with a minimum commitment of six months. Each small group will meet twice a month for one and a half hours, and it will be facilitated by a trained life coach. From there, Sulenes says, there is not much structure. 

“Founders can’t bring [anxiety] to their company, they have to hold steady and strong,” she said. “We are the place they can have their freak out that they can’t have every other place.”

The small groups will be created by a three-interview process led by Atlas. Sulenes noted that she matches groups based on stage of company, plus goals and personality structure “so the people who want to go deep and talk about existential problems” can. Others, she said, might want to keep it to business impact. 

Atlas “anti-matches” on sectors so there aren’t competitors in the same group. The company also has an offering in which it embeds a coach in a company to work with employees, executives and managers for mindfulness and development. 

Before the outbreak, Atlas relied simply on word of mouth. 

“We are different from coaching firms who are charging a lot of money and looking to be seen as experts — we are who we serve,” Sulenes said. There are no clinical psychologists within Atlas, but there are individuals who are trained to be life coaches.

Sulenes says that the team was thankfully “at scale” for massive interest with a group of trained coaches on deck. Right now, due to the pandemic, the startup is offering any founder a preliminary conversation, free of charge. 

Of course, the startup has had to respond to the novel coronavirus outbreak in-house as well. While the meetup is usually done in person, Sulenes said that the small groups will be done virtually. Next week, they’re having a free event for group coaching — it is titled Homeostasis Happy Hour. 

Detroit’s big three automakers are to shut down all factories due to fears over the coronavirus. Details are still in the works and will be announced shortly.

Over the last few days, United Auto Workers has been pushing the automakers to shut down their factories over concerns of worker safety. UAW President Rory Gamble sent a letter calling on the automakers to shut down for two weeks. It’s unclear if this pressure had any effects on the automakers’ thought process.

Ford and FCA said they intended to only suspend operations at several Michigan-based plants. Early today, Honda announced it was pausing all operations at its 12 North American factories, including transmission and engine plants in Ohio, Indiana, Alabama, Canada and Mexico. Ford and GM followed several hours later. Now, in the afternoon, FCA also decided to close its factories.

At this time it seems the automakers are focusing on manufacturing and assembly plants. Most automakers had already instituted a work-at-home plan for office workers.

Along with these factories owned by major automakers, third-party suppliers will be affected, as their parts will no longer be needed. It’s unclear how many workers will ultimately be affected by these closures.

Tesla is reportedly working through shelter-in-place mandates. Early today, TechCrunch published an internal Tesla memo detailing employee instructions for its Fremont-based factory. It read, in part, “There are no changes in your normal assignment and you should continue to report to work if you are in an essential function: production, service, deliveries, testing and supporting groups as discussed with your manager.” Tesla’s manufacturing employees, unlike the big three Detroit automakers, are not represented by the United Auto Workers.

Bill Gates, newly free from his role on the Microsoft board, has taken to Reddit to answer the community’s questions about the pandemic, the government response, and what the world can do to be better prepared. Always candid but never cynical, Gates gives some heartening but realistic advice.

Worth noting at the outset is that Gates and the Foundation have been warning about and preparing for an epidemic of this type for years. His 2015 TED talk in particular is extremely prescient, and he wrote a detailed article (PDF) around then for the New England Journal of Medicine detailing the lessons we should learn from the Ebola outbreak. The Foundation also participated in the creation of the Center for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations in 2017. (A recent simulation with Johns Hopkins that has been getting attention for its eerie parallels to the present situation is not in fact a prediction or good comparison.)

You can read all his responses (and the thousands of questions and comments) at the AMA, of course, but the most interesting ones have been lightly edited and condensed below.

Q: What do you think about the current state of testing nationwide?

Gates: The testing in the US is not organized yet. In the next few weeks I hope the government fixes this by having a website you can go to to find out about home testing and kiosks. Things are a bit confused on this right now. In Seattle the U of W is providing thousands of tests per day but no one is connected to a national tracking system.

Q: Can the 18 month estimate for a vaccine be shortened?

Gates: This is a great question. There are over 6 different efforts going on to make a vaccine. Some use a new approach called RNA which is unproven. We will have to build lots of manufacturing for the different approaches knowing that some of them will not work. We will need literally billions of vaccines to protect the world. Vaccines require testing to make sure they are safe and effective. Some vaccines like the flu don’t for the elderly.