Category: UNCATEGORIZED

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. Twitter bags deep learning talent behind London startup, Fabula AI

Fabula AI has been developing technology to identify online disinformation by looking at patterns in how fake stuff versus genuine news spreads online — making it an obvious fit for the rumor-riled social network.

Twitter says the acquisition of Fabula AI will help it build out its internal machine learning capabilities, writing that the startup’s “world-class team of machine learning researchers” will become part of an internal research group led by Sandeep Pandey.

2. Review: Ring’s new outdoor lighting products are brilliant

Twenty minutes after opening the box and throwing the instructions aside, Matt Burns says he had five new lights installed around his house and configured to his home’s network.

3. Live from WWDC 2019

The keynote starts at 10am Pacific today.

4. Amazon sellers to hit UK high streets in year-long pop-up pilot

The Amazon pop-up pilot program — which is couched as an exploration of “a new model to help up-and-coming online brands grow their high street presence” — will see more than 100 small online businesses selling on the UK high street for the first time.

5. A look at the many ways China suppresses online discourse about the Tiananmen Square protests

The effects of the crackdown appears to have spread beyond China, with the suspension of many Chinese-language Twitter accounts critical of China, even if they originated outside the country. (For what it’s worth, Twitter said this was part of a “routine action.”)

6. ‘Weirdo’ fintech VC Anthemis marches to its own drummer

Apparently, visiting the Anthemis office is like stepping into a Wes Anderson film. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The latest episode of Equity features a discussion of whether the tech press is too positive in its coverage of startups, while the Original Content team reviews the (excellent) animated Netflix series “Tuca & Bertie.”

Netflix announced this morning that it’s producing an animated series based on the popular card game Magic: the Gathering.

Anthony and Joe Russo, the brothers who directed “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” have signed on as executive producers, while Henry Gilroy (a writer on “Star Wars Rebels”) and Jose Molina (“The Tick”) will serve as lead writers.

While many Magic players care less about the plot and more about using the various spells and creatures to defeat their friends, the 26-year-old game has features an elaborate fantasy world and ongoing storylines about wizards known as Planeswalkers — in fact, a Magic novel recently hit The New York Times bestseller list.

Netflix has not announced an episode count or releaes date. Series production will be overseen by the studio Octopie.

“Our goal is to not only tell a compelling story leveraging Magic: The Gathering’s incredible body of work, but to also push the medium and perception of storytelling through animation,” said Octopie CEO Isaac Krauss in a statement. “This series will cross the genres of suspenseful thriller, horror, and drama with deeply developed characters the likes of which are not often seen in animation.”

20th Century Fox previously attempted to turn Magic into a feature film, with “Game of Thrones” writer Bryan Cogman working on the script.

If Uber gets its way, flying taxis will be coming our way in the next couple of years. The company plans to launch trials as early as 2020.

Mark Moore, Uber’s engineering director for Elevate, is one of the people tasked with making sure that happens. Moore joined the company back in 2017 from a 32-year-long career at NASA. At TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility, we’ll chat with Moore about how he’s bringing electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles from a concept to reality in urban environments.

Uber Elevate is Uber’s all-encompassing term for its initiative to launch uberAIR, which is its aerial electric ride-hailing service, as well as any other initiatives (think food delivery) that may benefit from air transport. Once Uber’s vision is fully implemented, the service will be autonomous, and cheaper than the cost of owning a car, on a per-passenger, per-mile basis, the company says.

Initially, uberAIR will cost $5.73 per passenger mile. In the near-term, Uber says it will get the cost down to $1.86 per passenger mile before ideally getting to $0.44 per passenger mile. At that point, it would actually be cheaper to use uberAIR.

As we get closer to a future where ride-hailing takes it to the skies, Harris will walk us through the logistics necessary to make sure these eVTOLs are safe, efficient and affordable.

Early-bird tickets are now on sale — save $100 on tickets before prices go up.

Students, you can grab your tickets for just $45.

Medical testing giant Quest Diagnostics has confirmed a third-party billing company has been hit by a data breach affecting 11.9 million patients.

The laboratory testing company revealed the data breach in a filing on Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the filing, the breach was as a result of malicious code found on the payment pages of the American Medical Collection Agency, a third-party collections vendor for Quest. The code skimmed information put into the website, like credit card numbers, as well as medical information and personal data from the site.

But laboratory tests were not included in the stolen data, Quest said.

The malicious skimming code dated back to August 1, 2018 until May 31, 2019, said Quest, but noted that it has “not been able to verify the accuracy of the information” from the AMCA.

Quest said it has since stopped sending collection requests to the vendor while it investigates, and has hired outside security experts to understand the damage.

It’s far from the first company to be hit by skimming malware. Highly targeted credit card skimming attacks hit Ticketmaster, British Airways, and consumer electronics giant Newegg in the past year, affecting millions of customers. The so-called Magecart group of hackers would break into vulnerable website and install the malicious code to skim and send data back to the hacker-controlled servers.

It’s not known who was behind Quest’s data breach,

A spokesperson for the American Medical Collection Agency did not immediately comment when contacted.

Read more:

• Security lapse exposed private Theta photos
• Flipboard hacks prompt password resets for millions of users
• After breach, Stack Overflow says some user data exposed
• An unsecured SMS spam operation doxxed its owners
• Samsung spilled SmartThings app source code and secret keys
• Security lapse exposed a Chinese smart city surveillance system
• A leaky database of SMS text messages exposed password resets and two-factor codes
• Chipotle customers are saying their accounts have been hacked

Ditch those generic emoji. Facebook’s new Avatars feature lets you customize a virtual lookalike of yourself for use as stickers in chat and comments. Once you personalize your Avatar’s face, hair, and clothes, they’ll star in a range of frequently updated stickers conveying common emotions and phrases. From Likes to Reactions to Avatars, you could see this as the natural progression of self-expression on Facebook…or as a ruthless clone of Snapchat’s wildly popular Bitmoji selfie stickers.

Facebook Avatars launches today in Australia for use in Messenger and News Feed comments before coming to the rest of the world in late 2019 or early 2020. The feature could make Facebook feel more fun, youthful, and visually communicative at a time when the 15-year-old social network increasingly seems drab and uncool. Avatars aren’t quite as cute or hip to modern slang as Bitmoji. But they could still become a popular way to add some flare to replies without resorting to cookie-cutter emoticons or cliche GIFs.

“There’s been a ton of work put in to this from the product and design perspective to find out, with how many people on Facebook, how to make this as representative as possible” says Facebook Avatars communication manager Jimmy Raimo. From offering religious clothing like hijabs to a rainbow of skin colors and hair styles, Facebook didn’t want any demographic left out. “They’re a bit more realistic so they can be your personal avatar vs trying to make them cute, funny, and cartoony” Raimo explains.

How To Make A Facebook Avatar

Users will start to see a smiley-face button in the News Feed comment composer and Messenger sticker chooser they can tap to create their Facebook Avatar. For now, only people in Australia can make Avatars but everyone will be able to see them around Facebook.

The creation process begins with gender neutral blank people can customize from scratch across 18 traits. For now there’s no option to start with a selfie or profile pic and have Facebook automatically generate you an avatar. Facebook is researching that technique, but Raimo acknowledges that “We want to make sure we don’t show you something totally opposite of the photo. There’s sensitivity around facial recognition.”

The Facebook Avatar customizer

Facebook won’t be monetizing Avatars directly, at least at first. There are no sponsored clothing options from fashion brands or ways to buy fancy jewelry or other accessories for your mini-me. Raimo said Facebook is open to these idea, though. “It would help personalize it for sure and from a business perspective that would be smart.” It’s easy to imagine Nike or The North Face paying to let Avatar sport their logos, or fans coughing up cash to wear their favorite labels. Perhaps that’s a micropayment use case for Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency.

Facebook is also considering expanding Avatars for use as profile pics or in Groups — two areas of the app where you interact with strangers and you might enjoy the anonymity of a 2D drawing instead of a photo of your face. However, Facebook hasn’t deeply considered turning Avatars into a platform so you could use them in other apps through an API or keyboard you install on your phone.

Instead, step 1 was just to make sure the Avatar creation flow is easy and most people can make one that actually looks like them. When asked about the ability to change the perceived age of Avatars to be inclusive of Facebook’s older users, Raimo admitted that’s a gap in the product. There’s no way to add wrinkles so mom and dad’s avatars might look a bit too similar to yours.

Avatars have come a long way since Facebook’s v1 prototype a year ago

The biggest problem with Facebook Avatars is that they’re hopelessly late to the market. TechCrunch broke the news that Facebook was working on Avatars a year ago. And while it’s good that it took the time to research how to make them inclusive, Snapchat gained a ton of ground in the meantime.

Bitmoji have been around since 2014, and since Snapchat acquired it in 2016, it’s been a mainstay of the top 10 apps chart. Sensor Tower estimates Bitmoji has been downloaded over 330 million times. And Bitmoji now has its own developer kit that’s spawning hit apps like YOLO. Like Snapchat Stories, Bitmoji may be too entrenched in popular culture for Facebook Avatars to ever escape their rap as a rip-off.

Facebook Avatars (left) vs Snapchat Bitmoji (right)

Yet that doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge opportunity here. The need for humans to expressively represent themselves on the internet is only growing as we shift from text-based to image-based communication. Whether for privacy, creativity, or convenience, there’s a wide range of use cases for having a parallel virtual likeness. There are still billions of Facebook users without a Bitmoji. And now Mark Zuckerberg has the foundation of a digital identity layer that could travel with us alongside our data, personalizing every online interaction.

Ditch those generic emoji. Facebook’s new Avatars feature lets you customize a virtual lookalike of yourself for use as stickers in chat and comments. Once you personalize your Avatar’s face, hair, and clothes, they’ll star in a range of frequently updated stickers conveying common emotions and phrases. From Likes to Reactions to Avatars, you could see this as the natural progression of self-expression on Facebook…or as a ruthless clone of Snapchat’s wildly popular Bitmoji selfie stickers.

Facebook Avatars launches today in Australia for use in Messenger and News Feed comments before coming to the rest of the world in late 2019 or early 2020. The feature could make Facebook feel more fun, youthful, and visually communicative at a time when the 15-year-old social network increasingly seems drab and uncool. Avatars aren’t quite as cute or hip to modern slang as Bitmoji. But they could still become a popular way to add some flare to replies without resorting to cookie-cutter emoticons or cliche GIFs.

“There’s been a ton of work put in to this from the product and design perspective to find out, with how many people on Facebook, how to make this as representative as possible” says Facebook Avatars communication manager Jimmy Raimo. From offering religious clothing like hijabs to a rainbow of skin colors and hair styles, Facebook didn’t want any demographic left out. “They’re a bit more realistic so they can be your personal avatar vs trying to make them cute, funny, and cartoony” Raimo explains.

How To Make A Facebook Avatar

Users will start to see a smiley-face button in the News Feed comment composer and Messenger sticker chooser they can tap to create their Facebook Avatar. For now, only people in Australia can make Avatars but everyone will be able to see them around Facebook.

The creation process begins with gender neutral blank people can customize from scratch across 18 traits. For now there’s no option to start with a selfie or profile pic and have Facebook automatically generate you an avatar. Facebook is researching that technique, but Raimo acknowledges that “We want to make sure we don’t show you something totally opposite of the photo. There’s sensitivity around facial recognition.”

The Facebook Avatar customizer

Facebook won’t be monetizing Avatars directly, at least at first. There are no sponsored clothing options from fashion brands or ways to buy fancy jewelry or other accessories for your mini-me. Raimo said Facebook is open to these idea, though. “It would help personalize it for sure and from a business perspective that would be smart.” It’s easy to imagine Nike or The North Face paying to let Avatar sport their logos, or fans coughing up cash to wear their favorite labels. Perhaps that’s a micropayment use case for Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency.

Facebook is also considering expanding Avatars for use as profile pics or in Groups — two areas of the app where you interact with strangers and you might enjoy the anonymity of a 2D drawing instead of a photo of your face. However, Facebook hasn’t deeply considered turning Avatars into a platform so you could use them in other apps through an API or keyboard you install on your phone.

Instead, step 1 was just to make sure the Avatar creation flow is easy and most people can make one that actually looks like them. When asked about the ability to change the perceived age of Avatars to be inclusive of Facebook’s older users, Raimo admitted that’s a gap in the product. There’s no way to add wrinkles so mom and dad’s avatars might look a bit too similar to yours.

Avatars have come a long way since Facebook’s v1 prototype a year ago

The biggest problem with Facebook Avatars is that they’re hopelessly late to the market. TechCrunch broke the news that Facebook was working on Avatars a year ago. And while it’s good that it took the time to research how to make them inclusive, Snapchat gained a ton of ground in the meantime.

Bitmoji have been around since 2014, and since Snapchat acquired it in 2016, it’s been a mainstay of the top 10 apps chart. Sensor Tower estimates Bitmoji has been downloaded over 330 million times. And Bitmoji now has its own developer kit that’s spawning hit apps like YOLO. Like Snapchat Stories, Bitmoji may be too entrenched in popular culture for Facebook Avatars to ever escape their rap as a rip-off.

Facebook Avatars (left) vs Snapchat Bitmoji (right)

Yet that doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge opportunity here. The need for humans to expressively represent themselves on the internet is only growing as we shift from text-based to image-based communication. Whether for privacy, creativity, or convenience, there’s a wide range of use cases for having a parallel virtual likeness. There are still billions of Facebook users without a Bitmoji. And now Mark Zuckerberg has the foundation of a digital identity layer that could travel with us alongside our data, personalizing every online interaction.

Substack is launching a new feature called “community” — namely, the ability for newsletter publishers to create discussion threads, which can either be open to anyone or limited to subscribers.

The idea of starting a discussion thread where readers can argue about things like the season finale of “Game of Thrones” isn’t new — and even before now, Substack supported comments when newsletters are published online.

However, co-founder Hamish McKenzie said, “The dynamic that we’re seeing in the comments sections is completely different from the dynamics in these community discussions. They perform more like a Facebook Group.”

Co-founder and CEO Chris Best suggested that these threads are conducive to more substantive conversations, because Substack has worked on “getting the incentive structure right,” especially since you’re interacting with “like-minded peers” and an “author that you care about, and in a lot of cases are paying money to.”

Substack Community

And for authors, it’s a way to build that sense of community, engaging directly with their readers in an ad-free environment.

“Unlike Facebook Groups or other places where people gather online, the Substack author owns the member list, the author owns the platform,” Best added.

Substack has been testing these discussions with authors like Daniel Ortberg and Nicole Cliffe, and today is making them available to anyone with a Substack newsletter. While the startup launched in 2017 as a way for newsletter authors to charge a subscription fee, it’s been adding new features like podcast support. As Best put it, “Our vision for what Substack is, is bigger than just being newsletters.”

Marcin Kleczynski is a shining example of the American dream.

A Polish-born immigrant turned naturalized citizen, Kleczynski grew up in the Chicago suburbs spending much of his time on computers and the early days of the world wide web. He couldn’t afford to buy computer games; instead, he downloaded them from the internet — and usually malware along with it. Frustrated that his computer’s anti-malware didn’t prevent the infection, he took to seeking help from security message boards to troubleshoot and remove the malware by hand.

That’s where Kleczynski thought he could do better, and so he founded Malwarebytes .

In early 2008, his company’s first anti-malware product was released. To no surprise, the very people on the message boards who helped Kleczynski recover his computer were the same championing his debut software. So much so that Kleczynski hired one of the people from the message board who helped him rid the malware from his computer as one of his first employees. Within months, Malwarebytes was turning over a couple of hundred thousand dollars, Kleczynski told TechCrunch.

By August came the question of whether he would run his company or go to university.

“After about a 15-second conversation with my mother, she quickly informed me that I would be attending university,” he said.

And so he did both.

Fast-forward to today, the company is a multi-million dollar anti-malware giant serving 150 million consumer customers and 50,000 paying small to medium-sized business and enterprise customers from its five offices — two in the U.S., as well as Estonia, Ireland and Singapore.

Anyplace, a startup offering furnished rooms and apartments to anyone who’s not interested in signing a long-term lease, is announcing that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding.

CEO Satoru Steve Naito said he co-founded the company to meet his own needs as a “digital nomad” who likes to move from city to city every few months.

“I wanted this product for myself: I hate to commit to a long-term contract, and I want utilities and wifi taken care of when I secure a room,” Naito said.

For him, that meant moving into a hotel, where he said the rooms are “easy-to-book and fully furnished.” And while Naito’s far from the first person to call a hotel room home (I did it myself for a summer journalism internship back in 2006), with Anyplace, he’s created an online marketplace where you can rent hotel rooms and other furnished housing on a month-to-month basis.

Naito said Anyplace normally negotiates a 30 to 50 percent discount with the hotels. (Checking the Anyplace website this morning, it looks like monthly prices in New York range from $1,331 to $4,157.) Those hotels then get a new source of monthly revenue, which may be particularly important as they try to compete with services like Airbnb.

And while the pitch might sound similar to a serviced apartment or a co-living space, Naito noted that Anyplace functions purely as an online marketplace, without operating any properties of its own. So it actually partners with apartments and co-living companies to bring them more renters.

Anyplace handles the booking and payment process, in return for collecting a 10 percent commission. It also reduces the risk for the hotel or property owner by performing basic background checks, and Naito also plans to introduce insurance that will cover eviction costs for up to $10,000.

And there are new features for renters in the works, including a “nomad loyalty program” that rewards frequent customers with things like airplane ticket discounts, and an online community to help you find friends when you’re in a new city.

“We don’t want to become boring housing rental marketplace,” Naito said. “We are not a housing business, we are a freedom business.”

When Naito and I met to discuss the funding, he estimated that there were around 100 people currently staying in Anyplace properties. He also said the service generated $1.3 million in bookings last year.

He acknowledged that while digital nomadism sounds appealing, it’s “a very niche and small group,” so Anyplace is also designed to serve anyone in need of temporary housing, whether they’re relocating for a new job, taking an extended business trip or moving somewhere for an internship.

The startup’s seed funding comes from Jason Calacanis, FundersClub,
UpHonest Capital, East Ventures, Keisuke Honda, Kenji Kasahara Bora Uygun and Global Brain.

Amazon on its latest earnings call announced it was working towards making one-day shipping the new standard for Prime members. This morning, the retailer touted a milestone related to those efforts with news that now over 10 million items are now available for one-day shipping to Prime members.

The news was largely a shot at Walmart, who only a few weeks following Amazon’s original announcement, said it was launching a next-day shipping service of its own.

But Walmart’s offering is much smaller — only 200,000 of its most popular items are available for next-day, which puts it more in competition with Target Restock, a similar offering with 35,000 items available — largely focused on household replenishment.

Meanwhile, Amazon this morning took the time to clarify some of its plans around one-day, reminding everyone that one-day isn’t just a switch that it’s planning to flip at some point — it’s already available across a large range of products and continuing to grow.

In Q4, Amazon had said one-day and same-day were available to over 10,000 cities and towns in the U.S. Today, Prime Free One Day is offered coast to coast, the company says. Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico have access to Prime, but speeds vary from one-day to five days.

In early April, Amazon says it “significantly expanded” its one-day selection and delivery areas for one-day shipping, and is continuing to add more products and expand its delivery areas.

While Prime speeds also vary by country, U.K. Prime members have access to one-day and customers in Japan often see same-day.

Amazon added that Prime Free One Day shipping is already 10 times larger than Prime two-day shipping was when launched back in 2005.

It’s supported today by Amazon’s network in the U.S. that includes 110 fulfillment centers, 40 package sortation centers, 100 delivery stations, and 20 air gateways.

What Amazon didn’t shed any light on today on how close it is to making one-day a default for its over 100 million Prime members.