Category: UNCATEGORIZED

09 Oct 2019

The first spacecraft that can service satellites to extend their life launched today

Up until now, commercial satellites have essentially been disposable. Even the massive, multi-ton ones that can have service lives spanning a decade or more eventually just become so much space trash once they’re out of fuel, or they experience some kind fo terminal mechanical failure. A new spacecraft built by Northrop Grumman and launched aboard a Russian Soyuz today (via Space.com) could change all that, however.

The MEV-1, as its known, is a satellite service spacecraft, which has the specific mission of meeting up with Intelsat 901 in orbit and lending it use of its orientation thrusters to put it back into an ideal target orbit – thus extending the useful life of the 18-year old satellite by as many as five years. Once it has succeeded in putting Intelsat 901 back on track, it’s very possible the MEV-1 could do the same thing for yet another orbital satellite running low on its own propellant supply.

In fact, Northrop Grumman says that the spacecraft is itself designed for a 15-year useful life, and can dock and undock multiple times, providing “well in excess of” 15-years of mission extension to geosynchronous satellites around 4,400 lbs in size while docked with said satellite.

That should mark a new era for commercial satellite operation, leading to further decreased operating costs, and therefore more access for startup and smaller companies to take part. Northrop’s MEV-1 is basically a space tug, but even that can as much as double the life of some geosynchronous satellites – which means a lot more potential revenue for not too much more cost, if the MEV-1 serves multiple customers who share the cost of its development and launch. Think of it as satellite servicing-as-a-service, or a SsaaS model for space tech companies.

Other satellite servicing projects are in the works, and could benefit companies like Orbit Fab, the so-called ‘gas stations in space’ startup that was a finalist in our Battlefield competition at TC Disrupt last week. Orbit Fab is working on a simple refuelling system for satellites to use in space, so that the servicing craft wouldn’t need to actually dock and propel the satellite it’s working with, just connect and transfer some fuel. Other potential business opportunities could lead from in-space commercial orbital spacecraft servicing, including upgrading satellites with new modules and sensors from different customers to maximize the return on the investment of their original design, build and launch.

09 Oct 2019

Facebook sure does love free $peech

Ensuring politicians in the 2020 election stay truthful is hard work, so Facebook has decided it’s going to sit this one out.

Biden’s campaign team had sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and global elections policy chief Katie Harbath that essentially called on the company to take down an a Trump campaign ad that made debunked claims regarding the Biden family’s relationship with Ukraine. Facebook responded to that letter today with their own letter to Biden saying that the company’s policies prevented it from making judgment calls on the veracity of speech in political advertisements. The New York Times has a full run-down of the situation.

Facebook isn’t alone in this manner, Fox News is remaining fair and balanced on the issue as well. CNN refused to run the ad.

Political campaigns are messy, so America’s largest content company — with more content moderators than any publication in the country — is leaving it to the free press to debunk what it’s getting paid to broadcast. But it’s not that Facebook wants to keep raking in stupid amounts of advertising dollars, no, it’s that the company is grounded in a “fundamental belief in free expression,” they say.

Here’s a quote from the company’s letter to Biden’s team: “Our approach is grounded in Facebook’s fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process, and the belief that, in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is already arguably the most scrutinized speech there is.”

I’m sorry, what? Facebook’s “respect for the democratic process” should raise eyebrows given how its products have been used in some highly publicized scenarios, but how does a platform that’s been abused so much at the detriment of democratic processes feel like it deserves to rattle that phrase off as another PR talking point?

Here’s the rest of the letter:

 

If Facebook just wants to allow politicians to spout mistruths and conspiracy theories without fact checks on its platforms as status updates from their personal pages, than some of these claims could be taken more seriously, but Facebook is getting paid to push these messages to its users. It’s algorithmically deciding where these messages go to based on parameters set by the campaigns via a system it designed.

Before you sound off, yeah, political advertising isn’t anything new. I am well aware that TV channels and newspapers have carried messy attack ads and hauled in the advertising revenues for decades, but Facebook is a platform designed around scale. Scale has allowed the company to tap massive revenue streams, but it’s also opened up the company to critiques. The company has learned to respect this scale after sizable amounts of external pressure were applied, but they’ve always defaulted to dated comparisons when it’s profitable to them.

Newspaper and TV political ads are painted with a wider brush and are subject to more stringent laws, but there’s a responsibility in Facebook’s precise ad-targeting that the company still doesn’t seem to respect. The company has the tools to push out judgment calls on content, and it could still do so on a case-by-case basis. Some truths are buried in more nuance than others, but by painting all political claims in its same bath of indifference to truth, Facebook is abusing its scale and creating a platform where politician speech is exempt from, as if political leaders aren’t the ultimate primary sources on politically contentious matters.

Political advertising legislation is going to take far too long to catch up to the current landscape of technology platforms, it would be nice if we could trust Facebook to stay at a moral forefront that isn’t legally mandated. Twitter and YouTube aren’t immune to this same criticism either, but Facebook is operating in broad daylight, believing that they can reverse engineer a free expression mission statement to prevent responsibility-free revenues from leaking out.

09 Oct 2019

Virgin Orbit plans to launch first commercial small satellites to Mars

Richard Bransons-backed small satellite launch operation Virgin Orbit wants to be the first to dedicate a mission to bringing commercial cube sats to the red planet, the company announced today. Working with Polish satellite company SatRevolution, Virgin Orbit has established a consortium along with a group of Polish academic institutions to jointly work on at least one, and as many as three small satellite launches to Mars, with the first one expected to happen as soon as three years from now.

The consortium is working to follow in the footsteps of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s MarCO mission from 2018, which saw two smaller satellites launched to Mars successfully. The group’s early studies have suggested that even satellites as small as 50 kg (around 110 lbs) or potentially even smaller can provide meaningful and useful research, including imagery collection, from both Mars and its orbiting body Phobos. These satellites could provide key info about the atmospheric composition of Mars, or even scouting for underground water, Virgin Orbit says.

Warsaw-based SatRevolution has experience in the commercial space industry, and in April this year sent Poland’s first commercial nano satellite into orbit. The universities involved, which include the AGH University of Science and Technology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, and many others, all have experience in space industry research as well. The plan is to launch the spacecraft developed by the universities and SatRevolution aboard Virgin’s LauncherOne rocket, which takes off from a converted 747-400 Virgin has retrofitted for the process.

Virgin Orbit is aiming to have its first orbital rocket launch later this year, and is currently going through the final round of testing before that happens. The company ran a successful drop test earlier this year, during which it let a non-functional rocket fall from the wing of the 747 launcher aircraft in a key test, and it’s been signing contracts to launch from the UK as early as next year.

09 Oct 2019

Pinterest launches a new PWA ‘Lite’ app for emerging markets

Pinterest is the latest tech company to introduce a “Lite” version of its mobile application to meet the needs of users in emerging markets. With Pinterest Lite, launched on Monday, users will benefit from a faster download and an app that takes up less storage space on their mobile device, the company says.

The app itself is actually Pinterest’s Progressive Web App (PWA) that’s been made available to Google Play users as a download.

This is a project that’s been underway for some time, according to a post last year on Pinterest’s Engineering blog. There, the company acknowledged that its mobile web experience had been “terrible” and in need of an update.

In July 2017, Pinterest formed a team to rewrite the mobile web app from scratch as a PWA. It said this would offer a better experience for people in low-bandwidth environments and on limited data plans.

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The Pinterest Lite mobile app is available today to Android users in Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Mexico, and clocks in at a tiny 1.4 MB. The main Pinterest app’s size varies by device on Android, but is significantly larger. On iOS, it’s 143.1 MB, for comparison’s sake.

“The goal is to bring Pinterest to everyone around the world so they can discover inspiration related to their interests wherever they might be,” a Pinterest spokesperson said, when reached for comment about the Pinterest Lite launch.

Pinterest is now one of many top publishers who offer a “Lite” version of their flagship apps.

Google has a full suite of lightweight “Go”-branded apps, like Google Go, Gmail Go, Files Go, YouTube Go, Google Maps Go and Google Assistant Go. There’s also Facebook LiteInstagram LiteMessenger LiteTwitter LiteUber LiteSpotify Lite, TikTok Lite, Skype Lite, and LINE Lite, to name a few others. Tinder had also said earlier this year it was working on a Tinder Lite app to better serve the Indian market. That app quietly launched over the summer.

Offering a Lite app is a baseline requirement these days for competing in emerging markets.

Pinterest, in particular, has been working to expand its global footprint, and recently reported international revenue was up 199% to 24M in Q2, and international monthly users were up 38% to 215 million, out of a total of 300 million users. However, the U.S. continues to drive the majority of Pinterest’s revenue, contributing $153M of the total $261M reported in Q2.

Image credit: Pinterest 

09 Oct 2019

DHS cyber unit wants to subpoena ISPs to identify vulnerable systems

Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division is pushing to change the law that would allow it to demand information from internet providers that would identify the owners of vulnerable systems, TechCrunch has learned.

Sources familiar with the proposal say the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), founded just under a year ago, wants the new administrative subpoena powers to lawfully obtain the contact information of the owners of vulnerable devices or systems from internet providers.

CISA, which warns both government and private-sector businesses of security vulnerabilities, privately complained of being unable to warn businesses about security threats because it can’t always identify who owns a vulnerable system.

The new proposal would allow CISA to use its new powers to directly warn businesses of threats to critical devices, such as industrial control systems — typically used in critical infrastructure. These systems are highly sensitive and are increasingly the target of hackers to disrupt real-world infrastructure, like the power grid and water supply.

By law, internet providers are not allowed to share their subscriber data without first receiving a legal demand, such as a subpoena, that can be issued from a federal agency without requiring the approval of a court. Lacking those powers, CISA has to rely on its federal law enforcement partners to use their powers to identify owners of vulnerable systems. Law enforcement can only serve subpoenas during an investigation. But CISA says it is still obliged to warn owners of vulnerable systems, even if there is no investigative interest.

The move is likely to spark fresh debate over how much responsibility the federal government has to proactively warn private-sector businesses about possible vulnerabilities in their defenses.

Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec and former NSA hacker, called the move a “huge power grab,” and warned that the proposed new powers are flawed and could be misused.

“I cannot fathom that this will not be used in a way that lawmakers who are drafting the legislation will not have intended,” he told TechCrunch.

Tarah Wheeler, cybersecurity policy fellow at New America, also said technical challenges the proposals were flawed.

“When you have traffic originating from a botnet, those IP addresses can be made to appear to be coming from anywhere, which means it can be used as an incredibly thin pretext for the government to knock on someone’s door,” she said.

CISA’s request for administrative subpoena powers is not unusual in government. Many federal departments and divisions use these subpoena powers to obtain information from private businesses. But these powers remain controversial, not least because they can be used to obtain large amounts of information without any judicial oversight.

The FBI uses its own controversial administrative subpoena powers to secretly demand subscriber data from phone companies and tech giants. The courts continue to question the legality of these so-called national security letters (NSLs).

A CISA official speaking to TechCrunch on background said that the proposals, which have already been submitted to Congress, would ensure that businesses would be “more motivated” to take action if the advisory came directly from government. The official said the agency was working with lawmakers to prevent any overreach or potential abuse of the authority.

Adam Comis, a spokesperson for the House Committee on Homeland Security which oversees CISA, did not return a request for comment.


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09 Oct 2019

Andreessen Horowitz hires Julie Yoo as general partner

Julie Yoo has joined Andreessen Horowitz as its newest general partner. She will make investments out of the venture capital firm’s bio fund, which closed on $450 million in 2017.

Yoo spent the last eight years as a co-founder and chief product officer of Kyruus, a venture-backed healthcare provider matching tool. She’s joins as a16z’s 17th GP; the firm hired David George, who focuses on late-stage deals, and Anish Acharya, who specializes in fintech deals, as GPs earlier this year.

More notably, Yoo becomes the fourth female general partner at a firm that for years had only men at the top of its ranks. The Slack investor hired its first-ever female GP, Katie Haun, in June 2018 to lead its crypto efforts alongside Chris Dixon. Longtime a16z investors Connie Chan and Angela Strange were later promoted to GP.

Yoo joins Vijay Pande and Jorge Conde on a16z’s biotech investment team. The trio will focus on life sciences, synthetic bio and broader health tech.

Julie Yoo Square

a16z’s newest general partner, Julie Yoo

“As we’ve focused on these three areas we’ve realized it’s a pretty broad opportunity,” Conde tells TechCrunch. “We wanted to find a GP that had the phenotype of what we look for in all of our GPs … and someone who has deep operating expertise that knows how to build companies.”

Before co-founding Kyruus, Yoo was the vice president of product at Generation Health, a CVS-acquired health management company. In her first role as a venture capitalist, Yoo says she will identify investments in companies transforming access to our healthcare system.

“We are an extension of the phrase ‘software is eating the world,’ ” Yoo tells TechCrunch. “We are focused on software eating care delivery and everything that flows from that.”

Among a16z’s health and bio investments is Devoted Health, which helps Medicare beneficiaries access care through its network of physicians and tech-enabled healthcare platform. Other investments in the space include Freenome, a liquid biopsy diagnostics platform; Apeel, which makes a kind of plant food-based barrier for fruit that aims to replace wax coatings; a care coordination network called PatientPing; and BioAge Labs, a company that’s trying to find drugs that extend humans’ health span through machine learning and biomarkers that speed up the discovery process.

09 Oct 2019

Silicon Valley’s competing philosophies on tech ethics with The New Yorker’s Andrew Marantz

“If Silicon Valley is going to keep telling itself the story that the only uses of their technology will be the most optimistic, the most hopeful, the most salubrious, the most prosocial,” New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz told me in Part 1 of this recent conversation for Extra Crunch, “you can try to rebut that logically, or you can just disprove it by showing a very glaring counterexample. If somebody is going around and saying, ‘all swans are white,’ you can argue against that logically, or you can just show them a black swan.”

Author Photo Andrew Marantz credit Luke Marantz fix

Image via Penguin Random House

Marantz, a brilliant and eclectic writer, has in recent years trained his attention on the tech world and its contribution to social unrest in the United States and beyond. He has just published a new book, “Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation“, which, along with recent New Yorker essays expanding on the book’s themes, is sure to provoke debate.

In part 2 of our conversation below, we discuss the Alt-Right and White Nationalists in tech and politics; Silicon Valley spirituality today; competing philosophies of tech ethics; and more.

Greg Epstein: If you look at the alt-right later that year and in 2017, I myself spent a lot of time poring over these figures like Richard Spencer and Gavin McInnes, and their videos, and their writings, and whatever thinking, ‘These guys are really taking over our society right now.

09 Oct 2019

Daily Crunch: China pressures Apple

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.

1. China attacks Apple for allowing Hong Kong crowdsourced police activity app

Apple’s decision to greenlight an app called HKmaps, which is being used by pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong to crowdsource information about street closures and police presence, is attracting the ire of the Chinese government.

Specifically, an article in Chinese state mouthpiece China Daily attacks the iPhone maker for reversing an earlier decision not to allow the app to be listed on the iOS App Store.

2. What the hell is up with this Essential device?

Essential CEO Andy Rubin tweeted photos of what he called a “radically different formfactor” — basically, it’s a long, skinny phone.

3. Uber’s newest feature alerts drivers that pets will be joining the ride

With Uber Pet, riders will pay a “small surcharge” for the privilege of taking their pets with them. And drivers will have the option of avoiding trips with non-service animals by opting out of Uber Pet trips.

4. Twitter admits it used two-factor phone numbers and emails for serving targeted ads

Twitter finds itself in the same boat as Facebook, which last year was caught using phone numbers and email addresses — given to Facebook to secure users’ accounts — for targeted advertising.

5. Google’s Grasshopper coding class for beginners comes to the desktop

A larger screen and access to a keyboard makes learning to code on the desktop significantly easier than on mobile. For example, in the desktop app Google is able to put columns for the instructions, the code editor and the results next to each other.

6. Amazon, Walmart confront India’s slowing economy as holiday season growth stalls

Even India’s biggest festive season, featuring blinding marketing blitzkrieg and heavy discounts from Amazon India and Walmart’s Flipkart, has failed to escape the pains of a slowing economy.

7. With $15M round and 100K tablets sold, reMarkable CEO wants to make tech ‘more human’

The reMarkable tablet is a strange device in this era of ultra-smart gadgets, with a black and white screen meant for reading, writing and sketching — and nothing more. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

09 Oct 2019

Social Club, a ‘censorship free’ Instagram clone for pot, gets booted from the App Store

Apple has booted a cannabis-promoting app from the App Store, Social Club, after it devolved into a place where users were openly posting drugs for sale, and became filled with photos of various drugs, guns and weaponry, racist content, memes, gore videos, and adult and child pornography, according to its users. The app is inexplicitly still live on Google Play.

Social Club first launched on July 15, 2019, and during its life saw 455,000 downloads across both iOS and Android devices, according to data from Apptopia.

The app was a part of a larger collaboration between Joshua Otten, the co-founder of cannabis lifestyle brand PRØHBTD and CEO of content services agency RONIN, and rapper and Cookies dispensaries owner, Berner. The founders announced in an August press release their plans for “Social Club TV,” an over-the-top cannabis network featuring series about marijuana like “Marijuana Mania,” “HighTech,” “Pot Pie,” and others.

The Social Club mobile app, meanwhile, was designed to offer a home for cannabis content and, most importantly, marijuana-related advertising, to flourish outside of Instagram, where such content is currently banned.

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However, the Social Club app promoted itself not just as a place for sharing photos of cannabis, but rather a “zero-censorship community,” which clearly invited abuse.

According to a tweet from Berner, who was responding to NYT Styles reporter Taylor Lorenz’s comments about the chaos raging in Social Club, the app had been “attacked.”

“I don’t see how overnight the app completely changed, sad, scary and wack,” he said. “Cleaning it up now.”

But the app wasn’t so much attacked as it was poorly designed. There was seemingly no moderation or image recognition technology in place on Social Club, giving users a rare look at what it would be like if social media had no limitations or rules.

As designed, the app was also very much an Instagram clone, offering the ability to post photos, comment, and browse a “Discover” page to find interesting content.

There, you’d come across a large number of marijuana photos, as intended, as well as pictures of cash, guns and other modified weapons, a wide range of other drugs (particularly pills), porn, memes, and spam. Some of its content, like the child pornography, is illegal. And some of its users were also openly selling drugs in the app, as well.

https://twitter.com/faneta/status/1181205250021187585

Since its launch, Social Club soared up the charts on the App Store, becoming the #12 top-ranked app on the U.S. App Store across both apps and games, and the #5 top-ranked app. Social Club isn’t as popular on Google Play, where its the #70 top app and #132 overall.

According to an Instagram story post by Berner, Social Club is now “temporarily” off of the App Store because “a weirdass porn community attacked the app.” He said the app is adding an image recognition system to help it identify and remove the problematic content, including the numerous photos of pills being posted for sale.

He also shot down rumors that Social Club “was working with the feds” and warned people (using a lot of expletives) that it was really stupid to be posting drugs for sale on social media using your phone in the first place. That being said, he promised Social Club wouldn’t look at its users DM’s.

Apple and Google haven’t commented.

09 Oct 2019

Toys R Us relaunches its website where online sales are powered by Target

Toys R Us is back online, thanks to a new deal with Target. Tru Kids, the parent company that acquired the defunct toy chain following its bankruptcy, has announced the relaunch of the ToysRUs.com website as it begins the process of opening its retail stores across the U.S. As a part of its comeback strategy, the Toys R Us website’s product pages will redirect to Target.com when consumers click the “buy” button to make an online purchase.

The retailers didn’t discuss the terms of the deal, but a revenue-sharing agreement is clearly involved in a scenario like this, given the mutual benefits. Toys R Us would be able to quickly establish cash flow from the still top-ranked, well-established domain name toysrus.com, while Target could get an influx of new sales from shoppers who visited ToysRUs.com, unaware of the toy chain’s bankruptcy and relaunch.

In addition to redirecting online shoppers to Target, the new website also features articles and videos about the latest toy trends and hot brands, plus in-depth product reviews, hot toy lists, and other brand experiences. These will be available on the ToysRUs website itself. Only when a customer is ready to make a purchase will they be sent over to Target for checkout.

The site’s “Buy” button is also clearly labeled so there’s no confusion at checkout. In Target’s red-and-white brand colors, it reads “buy now at [target].com” where the word “Target” is replaced with the Target logo icon.

Target shoppers sent to ToysRUs get the same benefits they would if shopping directly — meaning, they can place orders for delivery, curbside or store order pickup, and can earn loyalty points with Target Circle, or get 5% by paying with a Target REDcard.

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The new partnership between the retailers isn’t only focused on redirecting consumers’ traditional e-commerce product sales, however.

Target says it will also fulfill online sales when Toys R Us opens up its first experiential retail stores later this fall in Houston, Texas and Paramus, New Jersey.

Tru Kids had previously announced a deal with tech startup b8ta to create a modernized toy store experience featuring things like STEAM workshops, a treehouse for kids to play in, theaters for movies and games, and a way for brands to showcase their products in a more interactive environment.

At these stores, guests who want to purchase items that aren’t available in the store itself will be able to place their order with a store associate that gets fulfilled through Target.com.

“Target’s leadership in toys, digital and fulfillment are an unbeatable platform for ToysRUs to reconnect with their fans while we introduce them to the ease and convenience of shopping at Target,” said Nikhil Nayar, senior vice president of merchandising at Target, in a statement. “By applying our capabilities in a new way with ToysRUs, we can serve even more toy shoppers, drive new growth, and build on our toy leadership,” Nayar added.

The new deal with Toys R Us isn’t the only significant toy-related partnership Target has made in recent weeks. At the end of August, the retailer announced an agreement with Disney that sees it opening mini Disney stores within its retail stores, where shoppers can buy toys, apparel, collectibles, home items, and more. Twenty-five Disney “shop-in-shops” are open now and dozens more are planned for 2020.

“Our U.S. strategy is to bring back the ToysRUs brand in a modern way through a strong experiential and content-rich omnichannel concept,” Tru Kids CEO Richard Barry, a former Toys R Us exec, in a statement about the Target partnership.

“The foundation of that strategy requires the help of a retail industry leader and Target is the ideal retailer to support a new ToysRUs shopping experience, which is designed to provide families with endless ways to discover, play and enjoy toys. Target will help us deliver on that experience with its toy assortment, digital strength and ability to deliver orders to shoppers in a matter of hours,” he said.