Category: UNCATEGORIZED

WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Facebook, has faced a lot of controversy over the role that Groups plays on the platform — both for Groups’ role in spreading spam, misinformation or worse; and for the fact that it can be very hard (actually impossible) to control when you are added except by blocking a specific contact altogether.

Now, it seems that the company is finally starting to make some moves to change this. This morning, the company announced that it would start to roll out an update globally so that individuals can either block some or all people to keep them from adding them to Groups.

As per an update that should be making its way to you soon, you can now navigate to the privacy settings in the app to select who (if anyone) can add you to a Group, automatically. If you select anything other than “everyone” enabled to add you to groups, you will get notifications asking if you want to join first. (Picture here from WhatsApp’s blog post as it has not rolled out to me yet in London.)

Note: the feature still requires users to proactively navigate to their settings to turn it on. It doesn’t get turned on by default.

Some background and clarification here. You might recall that WhatsApp actually announced a version of this feature back in April that was more rudimentary: you could select Nobody, Everybody or Contacts (but not specific contacts) to add you to Groups. At the time, WhatsApp noted that the control would be rolled out worldwide. It turns out it never did: India was as far as it got.

(Indeed, the feature was launched just after it was revealed that Groups were being manipulated in India to influence political opinion, with hundreds of hoaxes being spread on the platform daily using Groups as the medium. That was giving WhatsApp bad press, and so the feature felt like an immediate response to that.)

Instead, WhatsApp quietly stopped talking about it, and people seemed to forget (Twitter and other social media has turned us into goldfish, slaves to the scroll).

Fast forward to today, and now it seems that WhatsApp is renewing but also committing to getting this out. A spokesperson confirmed to me today that, this time, Groups control really will be coming to all users on both iOS and Android, worldwide.

“Based on feedback from users during our initial rollout, instead of the “Nobody” option we are now providing a “My Contacts Except” option,” WhatsApp notes in its blog post update today. “This allows you to choose to exclude specific contacts or ‘select all’. This update is rolling out to users around the world on the latest version of WhatsApp.”

WhatsApp dragging its feet here is not unusual. The app is not famous for making changes quickly: it took almost a year — actually, two years — for WhatsApp to really start to get down to business with services for businesses. And there are a number of other examples of how the company does not roll out features with speed (or haste). We’ve long heard rumors about how the company had an interest in rolling out money transfer and payment services for consumers. These have yet to materialize.

So what comes next? Hopefully, WhatsApp will make one further change, and that is to set Groups to a with-permission-only setting by default.

If you have to dig into the settings to change an action — which you will have to do with this update — then it’s not on by default. As with Facebook’s privacy settings, this essentially means that many will miss the ability to set their own boundaries.

Adding better controls for Groups might not sound like a huge feature to you until you’ve been at the coalface of the Groups morass.

At its lightest or most innocuous, you are being added by tangential work contacts to annoying business chats, or groups of over-chatty folks coalesced around a particular interest. A nuisance, but not really the end of the world.

But at its darkest, people can get harassed, fake news can be spread, and you might get slammed with an offensive, shocking, disturbing image or two (or three). Given that the app is used by minors (as young as 13 in some markets, although I suspect many younger than this use it), other vulnerable people, and billions of others, Groups on WhatsApp need way better basic controls, usable by more than just those who read change-logs on app updates, or tech blogs.

SpaceX’s goal has long been to achieve truly reusable rocket launch capabilities, and for good reason: The company anticipates huge cost savings through re-usable rocketry, vs. expendable launch vehicles, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has described as a process akin to an airline throwing away their passenger aircraft every time they complete a flight. They’ve made lots of progress towards that goal, and now frequently re-fly parts of their Falcon 9 rockets and their Dragon cargo capsules, but the Starship spaceship they’re building now should be even more re-usable.

Musk provided an idea of just how much that could save SpaceX – and by extension, its customers – at a surprise guest appearance at the U.S. Air Force’s annual pitch day in LA this week. Speaking with USAF Lieutenant General John Thompson at the event (via Space.com), Musk said that fuel costs for the Starship should be around $900,000 per launch, and that once you factor in operational costs, it’ll probably add up to around $2 million per use. That’s “much less than even a tiny rocket,” Musk added, explaining why he views it as “imperative” that this launch system needs to be made.

Starship is designed from the ground-up to provide high payload cargo capacity, and when paired with SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster, also in development, as well as in-orbit refuelling, it’ll also offer the ability to transport large quantities of goods and satellites to lunar orbit – and eventually beyond to Mars, too. Starship will eventually replace all of SpaceX’s launch vehicles, the company hopes, a goal that it hopes to achieve because its operation should eventually be much more cost-effective than either Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy once it’s fully complete and flying.

For now, SpaceX is readying the Starship Mk1 and Mk2 prototypes for their first test flights, which will aim to achieve high-altitude controlled flight and landing, but still remain within Earth’s atmosphere. The company is also optimistically hoping for an orbital test in as little as six months’ time.

As slow-moving LinkedIn leaves rooms for startups to flourish, Elpha aims to create a tailored online network for women in tech.

The company is not only a graduate of Y Combinator but was conceived of behind the scenes of the San Francisco accelerator program. Cadran Cowansage, the co-founder and chief executive officer of the startup, was a software engineer at YC from 2016 to early 2019. It was during that stint that she created Leap, a tool meant to help her and her colleagues communicate. Soon enough, she’d granted the entire YC network of female founders access to the tool. Then earlier this year, she decided to spin the company out of YC entirely, rebrand and relaunch as Elpha.

“There’s a velocity that comes with building a startup and the pressure of funding that keeps you moving very fast,” Cowansage, who counts Abadesi Osunsade and Kuan Luo as co-founders, said of her decision to make Elpha an independent business.

“I had the idea for a long time,” she told TechCrunch. “I didn’t feel like I really had a big enough network of women who were at my level or a bit further along than I could go to for advice. Things like how do I get this promotion? Or my male peers, they are being paid more than me, what do I do about that? The conversations that are difficult that you really want a woman’s perspective on.”

Hybrid social and professional network, Elpha is meant to offer women in tech a dedicated space to communicate via public forums and direct messages, foster relationships and build their careers. The company, which completed YC this summer, is today announcing a $1.1 million round with participation from Y Combinator, the accelerator’s co-founder, CEO and president, Jessica Livingston, Michael Siebel and Geoff Ralston, respectively, as well as Maveron, Moxxie Ventures, JaneVC, Friale, Kabam co-founder and visiting YC partner Holly Liu, Block Party founder Tracy Chou and Breaker co-founder Leah Culver.

The “LinkedIn for women” charges $12,000 in annual subscription fees to companies who use Elpha to identity potential hires. Cowansage said the company currently has 20 paying customers, many of which are venture-backed startups like Lambda School and Webflow. The Elpha team plans to use the seed investment to hire, host events and continue the development of new products, including a mobile app expected out next year.

Ultimately, Cowansage hopes Elpha will bring together women in media, science, medicine and more.

“There’s a huge opportunity to bring women together across different industries and also create those sub-communities,” she said. “There’s a ton we can do from here.”

Neural Magic, a startup founded by an MIT professor, who figured out a way to run machine learning models on commodity CPUs, announced a $15 million seed investment today.

Comcast Ventures led the round with participation from NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Pillar VC and Amdocs. The company had previously received a $5 million pre-seed, making the total raised so far, $20 million.

The company also announced early access to its first product, an inference engine that data scientists can run on computers running CPUs, rather than specialized chips like GPUs or TPUs. That means that it could greatly reduce the cost associated with machine learning projects by allowing data scientists to use commodity hardware.

The idea for this solution came from work by MIT professor Nir Shavit. As he tells it, he was working on neurobiology data in his lab and found a way to use the commodity hardware he had in place. “I discovered that with the right algorithms we could run these machine learning algorithms on commodity hardware, and that’s where the company started,” Shavit told TechCrunch.

He says that there is this false notion that you need these specialized chips or hardware accelerators to have the necessary resources to run these jobs, but he says it doesn’t have to be that way. He says his company, not only allows you to use this commodity hardware, it also works with more modern development approaches like containers and micro services.

“Our vision is to enable data science teams to take advantage of the ubiquitous computing platforms they already own to run deep learning models at GPU speeds — in a flexible and containerized way that only commodity CPUs can deliver,” Shavit explained.

He says this also eliminates the memory limitations of these other approaches because CPUs have access to much greater amounts of memory, and this is a key advantage of his company’s approach over and above the cost savings.

“Yes, running on a commodity processor you get the cost savings of running on a CPU, but more importantly, it eliminates all of these huge commercialization problems and essentially this big limitation of the whole field of machine learning of having to work on small models and small data sets because the accelerators are kind of limited. This is the big unlock of Neural Magic,” he said.

Gil Beyda, Managing Director at lead investor Comcast Ventures sees a huge market opportunity with an approach that lets people use commodity hardware. “Neural Magic is well down the path of using software to replace high-cost, specialized AI hardware. Software wins because it unlocks the true potential of deep learning to build novel applications and address some of the industry’s biggest challenges,” he said in a statement.

eToro, the multi-asset investment platform that spans “social” stock trading to cryptocurrency, has acquired Delta, the crypto portfolio tracker app.

Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although one source tells me the deal was worth $5 million. It is not clear if it is stock only or cash (or a mixture of both) and if it is contingent on any future targets being met.

The Delta app helps investors make better decisions regarding their crypto investments by providing tools such as portfolio tracking and pricing data. It very much fits with the evolution of eToro, which not only wants to “own” the commission free stocks (and ETF) space, but has also ventured ambitiously into crypto — most recently bringing crypto asset trading to the U.S.

Delta’s crypto portfolio tracker app has support for over 6,000 crypto assets from more than 180 exchanges. It provides investors with a range of tools to track and analyse their crypto portfolios. To date, Delta says it has seen 1.5 million downloads and has “hundreds of thousands” of active monthly users.

The acquisition sees Delta become part of the eToro Group, while the Delta team led by Nicolas Van Hoorde will become part of eToroX, reporting to Doron Rosenblum. “The team will continue to be based in Belgium, working in close collaboration with eToro and eToroX employees across the globe,” says eToro.

Meanwhile, eToro is talking up the fact that it is a regulated platform where you can hold crypto and traditional assets in the same portfolio. The idea with the Delta acquisition is to extend that so you’ll be able to track all your investments in once place, starting with crypto and eventually multi-asset. In addition, you’ll be able to trade from the app via eToroX, eToro’s own crypto exchange.

“At a time when other fintechs state that they are not even targeting profitability, we are proud to be a well funded, profitable business that is growing both in terms of geographical coverage but also product range,” says Yoni Assia, co-founder and CEO of eToro, in a statement.

“We are a trading and investing platform that not only provides clients with access to the assets they want, from commission free stocks and ETFs through to FX, commodities and cryptoassets, but also lets customers choose how they invest. They can trade directly, copy another trader or invest in a portfolio. We believe in empowering our clients and the acquisition of Delta will allow us to add an important new element to our offering.”

Amazon’s kickstarted the smart speaker market with the original Echo, way back in late-2014. Like many of the company’s hardware offerings, it was very much a utilitarian device. The first Echo was smart first and speaker a distant second.

Echo’s how slowly gotten better in the sound department over time, but the arrival Apple’s HomePod and Google’s Home Max have highlighted the lack of real quality speaker in the Echo lineup. Amazon eventually added the Link, Amp, Sub  and Input to integrate Alexa into an existing home stereo system, but until this most recent round of announcements, the company never had a real answer to the HomePod.

The Echo Studio is every bit Amazon’s take on the HomePod, with all the good, the bad and the everything else that entails. While it’s certainly the most premium Echo speaker Amazon has offered to date, the Studio isn’t exactly what one would deem a premium speaker. The build quality and materials don’t feel on-par with that of Apple’s. But that’s to be expected for a product that starts at $100 less.

Amazon’s almost certainly made the right move by undercutting the HomePod. A $300 speaker would be an extremely difficult sell from Amazon. Hovering at just under $200 feels like a good spot for the Echo Studio to live, especially when one factors in Amazon’s frequent hardware discounts.

At first glance, the Studio looks a bit like the HomePod, with roughly the same dimensions. It’s significantly larger than a standard Echo, but not so larger that it wouldn’t fit comfortably on most desks or shelves. There’s a signature large light ring around the top, along with a quartet of physical buttons: Mic on/off (turning the light ring red), volume up and down and the “Action” button for trigger Alexa manually.

I will say, using Google’s devices recent does really drive home how much I like the touch based input for playing and pausing songs. That’s missing here, as with other Echo devices.

About two thirds of the way down is a large cut out that goes all the way through the speaker. This is the bass aperture, designed to max output of the downward firing woofer. And it does. There’s no lack of bass on the thing — too much for my taste, in fact. It tends to muddy rock songs.

Like the Echo Buds, the Amazon app offers control over levels, so you can adjust to your heart’s content. The Studio also nsing built-in calibration similar to competing systems to get a read on the acoustics of its surroundings. For the best sound, Amazon recommends keeping the system at least six inches from a wall. I tried a few different spots in my living room and found the sound to be good, but not quite up to other premium smart speakers.

The Studio does well with simpler playback, like Bill Evans’s jazz piano. When playing rock like the Hold Steady or hip-hop like Run the Jewels, the music costs some clarity. It does, however, get plenty loud and should more than do the job in an apartment or door room. The addition of the home theater option makes it a nice addition for users of the Fire TV, as well.

The Studio is, without question, the best and richest sound Echo to date. From a pure sound standpoint, I certainly can’t recommend it over an Apple HomePod, Sonos Move or Google Home Max, but the $199 price point fits comfortable in Amazon’s more budget-minded approach to the smart home.

Apple has teamed up with Veteran Affairs (VA) to allow those who’ve served our country to now access their health records via iPhone. Health records access via Apple’s Health app has been available to iPhone users since the beginning of 2018. However, the ability to access that data has been limited to those hospitals and medical systems working with Apple to allow people to access their records.

The VA started working with select patients on iPhone in a test run earlier this summer and is now able to offer this feature to any veteran who is an iOS user receiving care through through the Veterans Health Administration.

For those who don’t know, the Department of Veteran Affairs is the largest federal agency and the largest integrated medical system in the United States, providing service to more than 9 million veterans. The VA also serves a total of 1,243 medical facilities and outpatient clinics to support these veterans.

Though the VA has in the past included other various health apps catering to the needs of our service men and women, they’ve had a mostly singular focus like smoking cessation or self care. Apple’s latest addition to the Health app is much more comprehensive, allowing these veterans to see all of their health records — including lab tests, diagnoses, medications, immunizations and other health information all within the Apple Health app on their phone.

Access to personal health records has been a sore spot for many patients, with some systems requiring them to have to ask permission for their own information to share with other doctors and hospital systems. It’s also been an archaic process of printing out paper records and faxing over information. Compare that to Apple’s Health Records feature, which provides veterans with both comprehensive access and convenience, allowing them to take a more proactive role in their own healthcare in an easy-to-access digital space while keeping it within a privacy compliant environment.

“The Health app continually updates these records giving VA patients access to a single, integrated snapshot of their health profile whenever they want, quickly and privately,” an Apple company statement said.

For the fourth year in a row, Apple has updated its privacy pages.

Every year the tech giant’s refreshes the privacy portion of its website — usually a month or so after its product launches — to keep customers up to date with its latest features and technologies. Since its fight with the FBI, which saw federal agents try to force Apple to create an iPhone backdoor to get the contents of a terrorist’s phone, Apple ditched its historically secretive ways and went full-disclosure on its security and privacy practices.

Its privacy pages have evolved to house the tech giant’s various commitments to privacy, but also user tips and tricks and its twice-yearly transparency report detailing the number of government demands for data it receives.

This year — and for the first time — Apple has published several technical whitepapers detailing how some of its most popular technologies work. So far, the company has released whitepapers on Safari, Photos, Location Services, and Sign In With Apple — which all saw privacy enhancements this year.

Last year the company debuted a “download your data” page, allowing users to obtain all of the data that Apple stores on them, a legal requirement under Europe’s GDPR.

Apple says its privacy pages are the most visited part of its entire site.

As with previous years, the updated privacy pages now includes all of the new privacy and security features in iOS 13 and macOS Catalina, which Apple released earlier this year, including Safari anti-tracking, location awareness, and contact notes protections.

Apple’s new privacy website. (Screenshot: TechCrunch)

Immersive Labs, a cybersecurity skills platform, has raised $40 million in its Series B, the company’s second round of funding this year following an $8 million Series A in January.

Summit Partners led the fundraise with Goldman Sachs participating, the Bristol, U.K.-based company confirmed.

Immersive, led by former GCHQ cybersecurity instructor James Hadley, helps corporate employees learn new security skills by using real, up-to-date threat intelligence in a “gamified” way. Its cybersecurity learning platform uses a variety of techniques and psychology to build up immersive and engaging cyber war games to help IT and security teams learn. The platform aims to help users better understand cybersecurity threats, like detecting and understanding phishing and malware reverse-engineering.

It’s a new take on cybersecurity education, which the company’s founder and chief executive Hadley said the ever-evolving threat landscape has made traditional classroom training “obsolete.”

“It creates knowledge gaps that increase risk, offer vulnerabilities and present opportunities for attackers,” said Hadley.

The company said it will use the round to expand further into the U.S. and Canadian markets from its North American headquarters in Boston, MA.

Since its founding in 2017, Immersive already has big customers to its name, including Bank of Montreal and Citigroup, on top of its U.K. customers, including BT, the National Health Service, and London’s Metropolitan Police.

Goldman Sachs, an investor and customer, said it was “impressed” by Immersive’s achievements so far.

“The platform is continually evolving as new features are developed to help address the gap in cyber skills that is impacting companies and governments across the globe,” said James Hayward, the bank’s executive director.

Immersive said it has 750% year-over-year growth in annual recurring revenues and over 100 employees across its offices.

Richard Branson’s small satellite launch company Virgin Orbit announced today that it has secured final approval on a £7.35 million ($9.5 million) grant from the UK Space Agency (UKSA), funds which will be used by Virgin Orbit to help set up its Cornwall-based launch facility. Virgin Orbit has been putting together funding and securing regulatory approvals to establish the new launch site, which will be called Spaceport Cornwall and which will be part of Cornwall Airport Newquay.

This site will provide a UK-based launch site for Virgin Orbit, giving the UK domestic launch capabilities and providing a way for UK-based entities to do everything from build to launch within the country. The company is also working on developing a movable ‘ground operating system,’ which is essentially a series of towable trailers that Virgin Orbit can use to house ground crews that will support the missions of its LauncherOne vehicle, which is the airborne launch platform it’s developing for high-altitude small payload launches.

Virgin Orbit is one of two Virgin-branded space companies founded by billionaire Branson. The other, Virgin Galactic, just went public through an arrangement with Social Capital Hedosophia, a funding vehicle set up by Chamath Palihapitiya and partners specifically for the purpose. While both companies make use of modified terrestrial aircraft used as high-altitude launch platforms for vehicles designed to then reach space. Virgin Orbit’s launch system supports small satellites aiming for orbit, however, whereas Virgin Galactic’s launch vehicle is designed to propel a sub-orbital passenger vehicle just beyond the edge of Earth’s atmosphere.

Orbit’s commercial goals give it a clearer path to revenue generation and profitability, since other companies including SpaceX and Rocket Lab have built businesses on the demand for launch capabilities, with small satellites making up a big percentage of that mix. If all proceeds as planned with Spaceport Cornwall, the company hopes to be launching payloads from the location as early as 2021.