Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Grammarly, the popular grammar and spellcheck tool, is launching a major update to its browser extensions, web app and native desktop apps today. In its early days, Grammarly was all about the mechanics of writing correctly. With this update, the tool will go well beyond finding standard spelling, punctuation and grammar errors and add a number of new features that are meant to address issues that can hold your writing back.

To do this, the tool will now also highlight sentences and phrases that are potentially unclear, for example. It’ll also help you find the right tone for your text and choose the right words to keep your text varied and engaging. There’s nothing worse than having to read the same words over and over again when switching up a few words could make your text more varied and engaging, after all.

As some of these suggestions depend on what you’re trying to achieve with a given document, Grammarly now also allows you to provide more information about whether you’re trying to write a professional document or a travel blog, for example.

In its products, Grammarly will highlight these issues under new clarity, engagement and delivery sections (on top of the existing correctness tab). Inside the editor, the tool will now use four different colors to underline words and phrases that its algorithms believe could be improved. “The more Grammarly knows about what you want to accomplish with a piece of writing, the better it can tailor its suggestions to suit your needs,” the team explains in today’s announcement. “For example, when you specify the audience you’re writing for, Grammarly will adjust its suggestions to help you focus your writing for that type of reader.”

Somewhat unsurprisingly, most of these advanced features will only be available to paying Grammarly Premium users (starting at $30/month for the monthly plan, though the company offers significant discounts for annual subscriptions and regularly offers free users discount subscriptions, too). Some of the clarity suggestions around clarity and conciseness will be available to free users, though. Everyhing else? You’ll have to pay.

 

Arm today launched Flexible Access, a new licensing scheme in addition to its existing model, that will make it easier for startups to gain access to a wide range of Arm’s intellectual property (IP) without any upfront licensing costs.

Intellectual property licensing schemes for chips may not strike you as the most exciting thing. But as the number of companies that are building their own silicon, often for very specialized use cases, having access to the IP from companies like Arm is something that more companies than ever a looking to have. Until now, the only way to get access to Arm’s IP was to select the products you wanted to license upfront. That works for large companies that know exactly what they want, but for smaller companies, that’s a bit of a barrier, given that they are likely still trying to figure out what exactly they need.

Under the Flexible Access terms, partners get access to the IP and only pay a per-unit royalty fee once they go into production. Under the existing scheme, license fees were due before partners could access the IP.

“The reason we’re doing this is because we see that the industry is evolving quite significantly — lots of transformation that’s happening, new companies coming into doing custom silicon,” Dipti Vachani, Arm’s SVP and GM of  its automotive and IoT business, told me. “We believe that enabling this is easy access to IP and experimentation allows for the growth and the usage of our IP across the trillion connected devices.”

Vachani stressed that the company believes that this move will allow a whole range of new companies to use Arm’s IP portfolio since it significantly lowers the barrier of entry.

“This allows for a  lower barrier to entry for for anyone. It’s very straightforward. You go online, there’s a process to do so,” Vachani said. “And smaller companies that may not have the infrastructure that our traditional silicon companies have had — this makes this really simple and easy for them.”

That flexibility, the company hopes, will result in even more companies using its IP and hence driving more revenue as those companies sell their products. “I expect that this will
increase the scale,” Vachani said. “It’ll allow for the trillion connected devices that we internally talk about at ARM and enable those trillion connected devices to be on Arm and it builds on top of the ecosystem that we already have and that it will absolutely be accretive to our company and our business.”

Flexible Access includes about 75 percent of all Arm Cortex licenses from the past two years. This includes CPU architectures from the Arm Cortex A, R and M families, in addition to select GPUs, interconnects, security IP, system controllers and more — essentially everything you need to build your own system. It also includes software development tools and additional tools and models for building systems on a chip.

You’ll notice, though, that some of the newest high-end CPU architectures are not part of this license.  This, Vachani said, is due to the fact that the companies that need a high-performance CPU — say an A75 — typically know what they are creating from the outset.

Flexible Access, it’s worth stressing, does not replace Arm’s existing licensing system. The two will live in parallel. “What we did here is we looked at what is necessary for these endpoints in the IoT market […]. That’s where there’s a disruption happening and where the transformation is happening. We looked at the portfolio of IP that’s absolutely necessary for that kind of testing in that plane. […] When you look at the low end, that’s where all the experimentation is – the mid- and low-end.”

The program is now live and available to all chip companies that want to move to this licensing model, no matter whether they are a large chipmaker or a startup that is only dipping its toes into this business.

Tesla has made a tweak to its model lineup, eliminating the entry-level ‘Standard Range’ variants of its Model S and Model X vehicles. The change means that it’s now more expensive overall to get into either the all-electric Model S sedan or the Model X SUV, but the automakers also lowered the price of the new entry-level ‘Long Range’ variants of each vehicle – and dropped the starting price fo the Model 3 to $38,990.

“To make purchasing our vehicles even simpler, we are standardizing our global vehicle lineup and streamlining the number of trim packages offered for Model S, Model X and Model 3,” Tesla said in a statement to Reuters regarding the reason behind the pricing and lineup changes. “We are also adjusting our pricing in order to continue to improve affordability for customers.”

Reducing the number of model variants at the top end of Tesla’s lineup should help it minimize costs and focus high-end buyer appetite on trim levels with greater profit potential for the automaker with less production complexity. And the upside it gains there can be applied beneficially to cost of the Model 3, which is increasingly the source of the automaker’s growth.

Tesla’s second quarter vehicle deliveries were the highest on record, totalling 95,200 vehicles with the most affordable car in the lineup, the Model 3, accounting for around 80 percent of the overall mix.

Netflix has modified an episode of the controversial series ’13 Reasons Why’ two years after its original airing, citing sensitivity to the ‘ongoing debate’ that’s been occurring regarding the show’s depiction and characterization of teen suicide. In a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming explained why it removed a scene that depicted the suicide of main character Hannah (played by Katherine Langford) which lasted nearly three minutes, opting instead to have this take place entirely off-camera in the updated edit.

“We’ve heard from many young people that 13 Reasons Why encouraged them to start conversations about difficult issues like depression and suicide and get help — often for the first time,” Netflix wrote in the statement. “As we prepare to launch season three later this summer, we’ve been mindful about the ongoing debate around the show. So on the advice of medical experts, including Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, we’ve decided with creator Brian Yorkey and the producers to edit the scene in which Hannah takes her own life from season one.”

This scene was part of the original seasons one finale, but now skips the direct depiction and instead leads right into the reaction of Hannah’s parents to her death. Netflix also told THR that it will be actively monitoring and issuing take-down requests for pirated distribution of versions of the show that feature the unedited clip.

Showrunner Brian Yorkey also issued his own statement about the change separately, sharing this via Twitter in a Notes screenshot capture:

It was our hope, in making 13 Reasons Why into a television show, to tell a story that would help young viewers feel seen and heard, and encourage empathy in all who viewed it, much as the bestselling book did before us. Our creative intent in portraying the ugly, painful reality of suicide in such graphic detail in Season 1 was to tell the truth about the horror of such an act, and make sure no one would ever wish to emulate it. But as we ready to launch Season 3, we have heard concerns about the scene from Dr. Christine Moutier at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and others, and have agreed with Netflix to re-edit it. No one scene is more important than the life of the show, and its message that we must take better care of each other. We believe this edit will hep the show do the most good for the most people while mitigating any risk for especially vulnerable young viewers.

Earlier this year, a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry found that the show coincided with a bigger increase in suicides than was predicted by researchers among people aged 10 to 17, and the graphic depiction of Hannah’s suicide was cited as a particular risk factor among experts in the field. The study’s designers noted that they could only determine correlation, not causation, but it was enough to deepen the conversation around the show’s potential impact, which had begun along with its debut in 2017.

Meanwhile, the third season of the show is set to debut later this summer, and while Netflix told THR that it will not include any depictions of suicide, it is likely to reignite the conversation about the show’s impact, and Netflix is likely hoping this pre-emptive edit will help curb some of the negative reaction to the ongoing production of the series.

If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also text HOME to 741-741 for free, 24-hour support from the Crisis Text Line. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of resources.

Financial service companies like banks have seen some of their business cannibalised over the years with the rise of digital-based alternatives — often in the form of apps — that provide lower fees, faster responsiveness, and more flexibility to consumers. Today, Toronto-based startup called Flybits is announcing $35 million in funding for a platform that it believes can offer these banks a way of continuing to capture their users’ attention, and to help them pivot into the next generation of services, financial or otherwise.

Today, a typical end product for a customer of Flybits’ services will use insights to upsell a customer by offering financial services, for example a bank providing an offer of a specific kind of loan or credit card that you are more likely to take; or to offer a loyalty program or rewards for usage. But the longer-term goal, said CEO and co-founder Hossein Rahnama, is to help its customers take on a bigger role as repositories that can be used for more than just money, and used beyond the walls of the bank.

“We don’t think banks will go away as some do, but we think that they could have a role not just as money vaults, but as data vaults: a place where you can deposit data, which you trust,” he said in an interview. Indeed, some of the funding will be used to put into action some of the AI and machine learning patents the startup has amassed, with the building of a “data” marketplace for banks, fintechs, and other data providers to partner and build more services together.

The Series C comes from an interesting group of investors that includes both strategic backers using Flybits’ services, as well as backers of the more non-strategic, financial kind. Led by Point72 Ventures (hedge fund supremo Steve Cohen’s VC fund), the list also includes Mastercard, Citi Ventures, and Reinventure (the fund backed by Australia’s Westpac Banking Corporation), Portag3 Ventures, TD Bank and Information Venture Partners. Valuation is not being disclosed, and prior to this the company had raised around $15 million.

Much like another marketing tech company, Near — which today announced $100 million in funding — the premise that underpins Flybits’ technology is that there is a lot of disparate data out there that, if it’s treated correctly, can uncover a lot more insights about consumer behavior, and that by and large many companies are missing this opportunity because they haven’t found the right way of merging the data to unlock insights.

While Near is applying this to location-based data and a range of different verticals, Flybits’ primary target has been banks and the data that they and other financial services providers already posses.

Many smaller startups in the world of financial services have stolen a march on bigger incumbents by building personalization into their products from the ground up. (Indeed, some like Step, aimed at teens, are so personalised that they will actually change their service mix as their customer base grows up and needs new products.) This is something that incumbents might have been more readily able to do in the old days, when people knew their bank managers and tellers and made daily trips into branches to transact. In the digital age they have fallen behind and are now catching up.

Flybits’ investors have spotted that and this in part is why they are banking on technologies like this to help bigger companies catch up, not just in financial services (although with banking alone estimated to be a €6.9 trillion industry, this is clearly a good start).

“Personalization is mission-critical for all D2C businesses in the digital age. Flybits’ integrated platform allows financial services firms to offer contextualized experiences, driving product awareness and adding significant value to the lives of their customers,” said Ramneek Gupta, Managing Director and Co-Head of Venture Investing at Citi Ventures, in a statement. “We look forward to partnering with Flybits in its next phase of growth as it continues to set the bar for hyper-personalized customer experiences.”

Indeed, it’s not just banks that are working on upselling, or that have large repositories of data that are not used as well as they could be.

“Mastercard and Flybits share a vision on using data driven insights to enrich consumers’ experiences.” said Francis Hondal, President, Loyalty & Engagement at Mastercard, in a statement. “Our ultimate goal is to develop products and services that engage consumers in a highly contextual manner. Through this collaboration with Flybits, we’ll be able to offer rich, personalized experiences for them throughout their journeys.”

One of the shows coming to Apple’s forthcoming streaming original content video service, Apple TV+, is ‘For All Mankind,’ a series led by showrunner Ronald D. Moore, whose most notable previous credit is creating Syfy’s ‘Battlestar Galactica’ remake series. ‘For All Mankind’ is an alternate history fiction series that imagines what happens if the Russians beat the U.S. to being the first to land an astronaut on the Moon.

In a new featurette, Moore and his fellow series creators, along with some of their technical advisors, talk about the show, and what the actual Apollo 11 Moon landing meant to thew world. The 40th anniversary of that real historical event is coming up on July 20, but you’ll have to wait a bit longer to see the Joel Kinnaman-starring ‘For All Mankind’ – it’s arriving this Fall along with Apple TV+, but we don’t yet have specifics on exactly when, or on how much the service will cost when it does become available.

The official first trailer for ‘For All Mankind’ is below, in case you missed its debut last month. There’s not much to go on here but the premise definitely seems engaging, and I do detect a very BSG -ish vibe from what scenes are available to see here.

One of the holy grails in the world of advertising and marketing has been finding a way to accurately capture and understand what consumers are doing throughout the day, regardless of whether it’s a digital or offline activity. That goal has become even more elusive in recent years, with the surge of regulations around privacy and data protection that limit what kind of information can be collected and used. Now, a startup believes it’s cracked the code, and it’s raised a large round of funding that underscores its success so far and what it believes is untapped future demand.

Near, which has built an interactive, cloud-based AI platform called AllSpark that works across 44 countries to create anonymised, location-based profiles of users — 1.6 billion each month at present — based on a trove of information that it sources and then merges from phones, data partners, carriers and its customers, but which it claims was built “with privacy by design”, has raised $100 million.

The company believes that this Series C — from a single backer, Great Pacific Capital out of London — is one of the biggest rounds ever to be raised in this particular area of marketing technology. That’s not to say that others haven’t also been attracting investor attention (as one example, a direct competitor, Factual, raised $42 million last September).

Near is not disclosing its valuation, but founder and CEO Anil Mathews said in an interview that the company has been growing at a rate of 100% year-on-year and described it as “healthy” with its customer list including News Corp, MetLife, Mastercard and WeWork.

Near (not to be confused with the blockchain startup that raised $12 million last week; yes sometimes startups have the same name…) has to date raised $134 million, with other backers including Sequoia, JP Morgan, Cisco and Telstra (Canaan Partners had been an investor too but sold its stake in a secondary deal).

The problem that Near is tackling is not a new one. The wider swing that we’ve seen in consumer behavior to digital platforms and using connected devices has created an opportunity for (and demand from) companies to better track who is using their products and services, and also to proactively figure out who would be the best audiences to target for future business.

But there have been two catches to that pull: how best to capture activity when it’s not specifically digital (for example, going into a physical store), and how best to capture activity in a way that doesn’t encroach on customers’ privacy and right to be anonymous if they so choose — with the latter becoming more than just a principle in many jurisdictions, but fully-fledged rule of law.

Near’s approach is not entirely novel. Like many others that currently exist or preceded Near, the startup uses a collection of data points sourced from a variety of providers — in Near’s case, the list can include your mobile carrier, data providers that work with dozens or hundreds of apps to source activity, app providers directly, retailers and WiFi operators.

The similarities end there, however, said Mathews. He says Near has a (patented) technique based on machine learning algorithms and other inferential AI technology, which it uses to accurately merge all of these details together to create individual profiles, all without ever attaching a name or real identifiers of any kind to that profile.

“If you ask me, that’s actually the hardest problem we’ve solved,” he said. “There is no other company out there that works with all this data to unify it into individual identities.”

Using mobile device IDs, he said Near can “with a high degree of confidence” connect specific profiles with transactions. “But it’s the fact that we can perform the data fusion in a compliant way, marrying that data in a world where privacy and data safety matter,” that makes the company unique, Mathews added.

Rubicon Project, Factual and Blis are other providers that are building similar technology, he noted, but Near is the first to extend the offering far (so to speak): none others have the same global reach, making it a popular partner for multinationals researching for campaigns and product development.

Marketing research is one of the main features of AllSpark, the company’s flagship platform, where non-technical people can ask questions in natural language — example, show me how many women shop at Whole Foods in San Francisco — and you can get a data-based response, which you can then tweak with more tailored questions about the profile of a user, or use a dragging graphic tool on an interactive map to modify the geography, and so on.

Mathews notes that the “real” numbers that come up from such questions — in the case of the above query, it’s 71,904 women, by the way — are based on the figures of who is actually connected to the Near network. The ratios vary by city and country, but typically, he said that in the Bay Area, it’s capturing around 45% of any live audience (meaning, the actual number of female visitors is probably more like 150,000).

From there, you can save a query to return to it, or even use the Near platform to connect through to other services to craft and launch marketing campaigns. Notably, some features — such the ability for a client to upload or use cookie data into the platform to use it to build profiles — are not available in all markets, part of how Near keeps itself on the right side of company’s own data compliance policies as well as data protection rules in different markets.

Those kinds of integrations is likely one area that will start to get developed even more with this round of funding, to keep Near’s technology from being too siloed and removed from how marketers and researchers typically work.

Companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have made a huge business out of figuring out how to identify and target audiences and specific users with products and services, by way of advertising and more. I asked, and Mathews said, that he doesn’t see them as threats in this area simply because it would open a can of worms for them.

“They would get into a big privacy issue if they tried,” he said. “Companies like Google and Facebook have done [frankly] an amazing job at identifying audiences, but they are not designed for privacy. We started with privacy by design.”

Indeed, it was Near’s position as one of the “outliers” by emphasizing data protection and anonymity that Mathews said helped it get over the line with investors. “It’s a very tough funding environment for the industry we’re in, but we found interest because of our approach to privacy. That really helped us.”

Ketan Patel, CEO, GPC, echoed that sentiment. “Near provides insights into human behavior by analyzing where people are, and combining that with a multitude of data points to predict and influence behaviour,” he said in a statement. “Given it does this across the globe in a privacy protected manner, it is well-positioned to create an exciting new space that delivers value to both people, and those that wish to build relationships with them.”

IQ Capital, a UK-based deep tech fund which has invested in startups such as Paragraf, Senseye and Funderbeam, has launched a new $125 million ‘Growth Opportunities Fund’ and closed its third venture fund, IQ Capital Fund III, at $175 million. This brings the total new capital to be invested to over $300 million. National Grid Partners have joined British Patient Capital and a number of other global institutions, as an investor in IQ Capital Fund III.

The move is part of a wider shift in VC investing across Europe towards so-called deep tech (AI, BioTech, Blockchain etc).For instance, Adara Ventures, a spanish VC firm recently closed its third fund with commitments in excess of €65 million to back European early-stage deep tech startups.

IQ says the $125 million fund will provide later-stage capital to the best-performing companies in their existing portfolio. The first to benefit from this is Privitar, a startup in data privacy engineering which IQ Capital funded from seed stage, as part of its $40 million Series B funding round announced last month.

Alongside the launch of the new fund, IQ Capital has reached the final closing for its third venture fund at $175 million, which focuses on investing into companies at Seed and Series A stage. In the last year, IQ Capital has invested in 12 companies, including Causalens, Concirrus, and Iotic. Previous Fund II startups include Thought Machine, Fluidic Analytics, Paragraf, and Speechmatics.

Max Bautin, Co-Founder and Partner at IQ Capital, said a statement: “The partners, Ed Stacey, Kerry Baldwin, and I, have been investing in deep-tech for over 20 years, and during this time we’ve seen investment in the sector grow from tens of millions p.a. to $1.75 billion deployed across Europe in 2018 alone. Half of this capital was invested into UK start-ups, reinforcing the UK as a leader in Europe, with well-established technology ecosystems formed in Cambridge, Bristol, Oxford, and London.

“IQ Capital has grown its funds under management over 10x in the last five years, following exits to Google, Apple, and Facebook, and a double-dragon to Oracle. The investment team has tripled in size over the same period with recent joiners Rick Hao, Daniel Carew and Marek Chalupnik. IQ Capital is now firmly established as the leading deep tech investor in the UK.”

Lisa Lambert, Founder and President of National Grid Partners said: “IQ Capital… is positioned as the go-to deep-tech fund in the EU, and the team has a proven ability to connect with founders through all stages, from seed to exit.”

Facebook has launched a tool for UK users to report ads they suspect of being scams.

The feature can be accessed by clicking the three dots in the top right corner of each ad on Facebook, then selecting ‘Report ad’, then ‘Misleading or scam ad’ and finally: ‘Send a detailed scam report’.

So if you want to think of it as a reporting ‘button’ it’s a button that actually requires four presses to function as intended…

Once a scam ad report has been filed, the feature will alert a dedicated internal ops team at Facebook that is tasked with handling reports — so will be reviewing reports and removing violating ads.

The new consumer safety feature follows a defamation lawsuit filed in April last year by consumer advice personality, Martin Lewis, who had become exasperated by the volume of scam ads misappropriating his image on social media to try to trick users into parting with their savings.

Earlier this year Lewis announced he was withdrawing his lawsuit after Facebook agreed to beef up its response to the problem by saying it would add the scam ad reporting feature — which is exclusive to the UK for now — and establish a local team to monitor ad trends for dubious activity.

Facebook also agreed to donate £3M worth of support in cash and Facebook ad credits to UK consumer advice charity, Citizens Advice, to fund the setting up of a Citizens Advice Scams Action (Casa) service — which has also launched today.

This service will provide specialist one-on-one help to those worried they’re being scammed or who have already lost money as a result of fake ads. It will also undertaken scam prevention work, including by raising awareness of online scams in the UK.

Writing in a blog post today on the money saving advice website he founded, Lewis confirms both the Facebook scam ad report tool and Casa have launched — the former some three months tardier than Facebook had suggested at their joint press conference in January.

As regards Casa, UK Internet users who think they have been, or are being, scammed online — either by ads or other methods — can now call the service on 0300 330 3003 for one-on-one help, or access http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/scamsaction for more info or a web chat.

Face to face appointments will also be available in England, Wales and Scotland at local Citizens Advice bureaus. Lewis writes that the service is expected to help at least 20,000 people in the first year.

“These initiatives, which are available from today, are crucial, as scam ads can have devastating consequences,” he adds, noting that his own complaints to Facebook vis-a-vis scam ads bearing his image led to more than 1,000 ads being taken down.

“The adverts, placed by criminals, often use fake celebrity images or endorsements to dupe people into investing in fake ‘get rich quick’ schemes, buying diet pills and more.

“They can lead to many people being conned out of their cash – in the case below a man in his 80s lost almost £50,000 – and have a serious impact on people’s mental health and self-esteem.”

We’ve reached out to Facebook with questions, including whether it has plans to extend the scam ads reporting tool to other markets.

In a statement provided to Lewis, Steve Hatch, Facebook’s vice president for northern Europe, said: “Scam ads are an industry-wide problem caused by criminals and have no place on Facebook. Through our work with Martin Lewis, we’re taking a market leading position and our new reporting tool and dedicated team are important steps to stop the misuse of our platform.

“Prevention is also key. Our £3 million donation to Citizens Advice will not only help those who have been impacted by scammers, but raise awareness of how to avoid scams too. At a global level we’ve tripled the size of our safety and security team to 30,000 people and continue to invest heavily in removing bad content from our platform.”

Also commenting in a statement, Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, added: “We know online scams affect thousands of people every year. We’re pleased the agreement between Martin Lewis and Facebook meant we could set up this dedicated service to give more help to people who have fallen victim to online scams.

“This project means we can not only support people who have been targeted, but also raise awareness of what to look out for to help prevent online scams happening in the first place. Citizens Advice Scams Action will work alongside the free and impartial help we already offer to anyone who needs advice — whoever they are, whatever their problem.”

While celebrating the launch of Casa, Lewis’ blog post points out that the initial funding “won’t last for ever” — and he calls on other big online ad players to “follow Facebook’s lead, and put their hands in their pockets”.

At the press conference in January Lewis was especially critical of Google for being less responsive to the issue and for not having easy ways for users to report scam ads running on its networks.

We’ve reached out to Google for a response.

In another recent change to its ads platform, Facebook is also now providing users with more information about why they are seeing an ad — if they click through the menu to the option ‘why I am seeing this ad?’.

The company had been criticized for displaying only extremely general targeting criteria — making the feature appear more like a smokescreen than a genuine step towards ad targeting transparency. But last week Facebook said it was now showing “more detailed targeting, including the interests or categories that matched you with a specific ad”.

It also said it will be “clearer where that information came from (e.g. the website you may have visited or Page you may have liked)”. 

Facebook also announced updates to the Ad Preferences menu to provide its users with more information about businesses and third parties that upload lists containing their personal data, such as their email address or phone number, to Facebook to target them with ads — though limiting the data to a 90-day snapshot.

“This section aims to help you understand the third parties and businesses who have uploaded and shared lists with your information,” it wrote of the changes. “In this section, you’ll see the business that initially uploaded a list, along with any advertiser who used that list to serve you an ad within the last 90 days.”

Despite this, Facebook still does not let users deny advertiser uploads of their personal data to Facebook via Facebook itself.

In order to do that a Facebook user would have to contact each and every advertiser individually.

Challenger bank N26 has unveiled a new premium plan called N26 You. This plan replaces N26 Black with the same benefits and a few tweaks.

N26 is keeping its three-tier system with a free basic bank account, a premium account (N26 You) and a super premium account (N26 Metal). With N26’s free plan, you can pay anywhere in the world without any foreign transaction fee, but there’s a 1.7% markup on ATM withdrawals in a foreign currency.

N26 You costs the same price as the previous premium plan N26 Black, €9.90 in the Eurozone and £4.90 in the U.K. In addition to a travel and purchase insurance package, you can withdraw money without any foreign transaction fee. €9.90 is roughly what you’d pay in fees if you withdraw the equivalent of €580 with a free N26 account.

You can also create up to 10 Spaces to organize your money with savings goals, separate sub-accounts and more — free accounts can only create two Spaces.

And of course, you get a better looking card. N26 is reusing its pastel color palette to give you more options. You can now choose between five different colors — Aqua, Rhubarb, Sand, Slate and Ocean. The card has a minimal design with a tiny N26 logo in the top left corner, a transparent line at the bottom of the card and a solid color background.

N26 also plans to add perks to the N26 You plan, such as discounts on Hotels.com, WeWork, GetYourGuide, Babbel, Blinkist and Bloom & Wild. Those perks were limited to N26 Metal customers in the past, so it’s going to be interesting to see how the lineup will work once those perks are added to N26 You. If you’re an existing N26 Black customer, you automatically become an N26 You customer.

Changing N26 Black to a premium plan with multiple card designs might seem like a small detail, but it potentially opens up a lot of possibilities. You’ll soon be able to order an additional card.

Eventually, you could imagine having a blue card associated with your main account and a yellow card associated with a shared Space sub-account for instance. At least, that’s what I hope the company will do.