Scribd is moving into the original content business with the release of “Mueller’s War,” a book by journalist Garrett Graff looking at the prosecutor’s time as a marine in the Vietnam War.
CEO Trip Adler revealed earlier this year that the subscription e-book and audiobook service would be moving in this direction. Today, Scribd is actually releasing its first title and revealing more details about its plans.
Adler told me the initial lineup of Scribd Originals mixes fiction and nonfiction, with a focused on “the space between a magazine article and a book” — namely, pieces up to 50,000 words in length, that are too long to run in a magazine but aren’t long enough to be published as a standalone book.
The hope is for Scribd to build a closer relationship with authors while offering something that’s “unique for our readers,” Adler said.
“We pay an advance similar for a traditional book,” he added. ”There’s a period of exclusivity, [but] in some cases we will also be distributing books over time to other digital platforms … We’re still staying open-minded about those kinds of things.”
The plan is to release one original title (in both e-book and audiobook form) each month, and to that end, the company has brought on former Byliner editor in chief Mark Bryant as an editor. Upcoming originals include work from authors Roxane Gay, Mark Seal, Hilton Als, Peter Heller and Paul Theroux.
And while Amazon’s moves into publishing have been one of the sources of tension between the e-commerce giant and traditional publishers, Adler said Scribd has run its plans by some of its publishing partners: “We really expect them to embrace this. This is just a great way for their authors to keep in touch with their audience between books.”
He even suggested that in some cases, a successful Scribd Original could be turned into a full-length book that’s released by a traditional publisher.
Remember Fleksy? The customizable Android keyboard app has a new trick up its sleeve: It’s adding a store where users can find and add lightweight third party apps to enhance their typing experience.
Right now it’s launched a taster, preloading a selection of ‘mini apps’ into the keyboard — some from very familiar brand names, some a little less so — so users can start to see how it works.
The first in-keyboard apps are Yelp (local services search); Skyscanner (flight search); Giphy (animated Gif search); GifNote (music Gifs; launching for U.S. users only for rights reasons); Vlipsy (reaction video clips); and Emogi (stickers) — with “many more” branded apps slated as coming in the next few months.
They’re not saying exactly what other brands are coming but there are plenty of familiar logos to be spotted in their press materials — from Spotify to Uber to JustEat to Tripadvisor to PayPal and more…
The full keyboard store itself — which will let users find and add and/or delete apps — will be launching at the end of this month.
The latest version of the Fleksy app can be downloaded for free via the Play Store.
Mini apps made for messaging
The core idea for these mini apps (aka Fleksyapps) is to offer lightweight additions designed to serve the messaging use case.
Say, for example, you’re chatting about where to eat and a friend suggests sushi. The Yelp Fleksyapp might pop up a contextual suggestion for a nearby Japanese restaurant that can be shared directly into the conversation — thereby saving time by doing away with the need for someone to cut out of the chat, switch apps, find some relevant info and cut and paste it back into the chat.
Fleksyapps are intended to be helpful shortcuts that keep the conversation flowing. They also of course put brands back into the conversation.
“We couldn’t be more excited to bring the power of the world’s popular songs with GIFs, videos and photos to the new Fleksyapps platform,” says Gifnote co-founder, John vanSuchtelen, in a supporting statement.
Fleksy’s mini apps appear above the Qwerty keyboard — in much the same space as a next-word prediction. The user can scroll through the app stack (each a tiny branded circle until tapped on to expand) and choose one to interact with. It’s similar to the micro apps lodged in Apple’s iMessage but on Android where iMessage isn’t… The team also plans for Fleksy to support a much wider range of branded apps — hence the Fleksyapps store.
In-keyboard apps is not a new concept for the dev team behind Fleksy; an earlier keyboard app of theirs (called ThingThing) offered micro apps they built themselves as a tool to extend its utility.
But now they’re hoping to garner backing and buy in from third party brands excited about the exposure and reach they could gain by being where users spend the most device time: The keyboard.
“Think of it a bit like the iMessage equivalent but on Android across any app. Or the WeChat mini program but inside the keyboard, available everywhere — not only in one app,” CEO Olivier Plante tells TechCrunch. “That’s a problem of messaging apps these days. All of them are verticals but the keyboard is horizontal. So that’s the benefit for those brands. And the user will have the ability to move them around, add some, to remove some, to explore, to discover.”
“The brands that want to join our platform they have the option of being preloaded by default. The analogy is that by default on the home screen of a phone you are by default in our keyboard. And moving forward you’ll be able to have a membership — you’re becoming a ‘brand member’ of the Fleksyapps platform, and you can have your brand inside the keyboard,” he adds.
The first clutch of Fleksyapps were developed jointly, with the team working with the brands in question. But Plante says they’re planning to launch a tool in future so brands will be able to put together their own apps — in as little as just a few hours.
“We’re opening this array of functionalities and there’s a lot of verticals possible,” he continues. “In the future months we will embed new capabilities for the platform — new type of apps. You can think about professional apps, or cloud apps. Accessing your files from different types of clouds. You have the weather vertical. You have ecommerce vertical. You have so many verticals.
“What you have on the app store today will be reflected into the Fleksyappstore. But really with the focus of messaging and being useful in messaging. So it’s not the full app that we want to bring in — it’s really the core functionality of this app.”
The Yelp Fleksyapp, for example, only includes the ability to see nearby places and search for and share places. So it’s intentionally stripped down. “The core benefit for the brand is it gives them the ability to extend their reach,” says Plante. “We don’t want to compete with the app, per se, we just want to bring these types of app providers inside the messenger on Android across any app.”
On the user side, the main advantage he touts is “it’s really, really fast — fleshing that out to: “It’s very lightweight, it’s very, very fast and we want to become the fastest access to content across any app.”
Users of Fleksyapps don’t need to have the full app installed because the keyboard plugs directly into the API of each branded service. So they get core functionality in bite-sized form without a requirement to download the full app. (Of course they can if they wish.)
So Plante also notes the approach has benefits vis-a-vis data consumption — which could be an advantage in emerging markets where smartphone users’ choices may be hard-ruled by the costs of data and/or connectivity limits.
“For those types of users it gives them an ability to access content but in a very light way — where the app itself, loading the app, loading all the content inside the app can be megabits. In Fleksy you’re talking about kilobits,” he says.
Privacy-sensitive next app suggestions
While baking a bunch of third party apps into a keyboard might sound like a privacy nightmare, the dev team behind Fleksy have been careful to make sure users remain in control.
To wit: Also on board is an AI keyboard assistant (called Fleksynext) — aka “a neural deep learning engine” — which Plante says can detect the context, intention and sentiment of conversations in order to offer “very useful” app suggestions as the chat flows.
The idea is the AI supports the substance of the chat by offering useful functionality from whatever pick and mix of apps are available. Plante refers to these AI-powered ‘next app’ suggestions as “pops”.
And — crucially, from a privacy point of view — the Fleksynext suggestion engine operates locally, on device.
That means no conversation data is sent out of the keyboard. Indeed, Plante says nothing the user types in the keyboard itself is shared with brands (including suggestions that pop up but get ignored). So there’s no risk — as with some other keyboard apps — of users being continually strip-mined for personal data to profile them as they type.
That said, if the user chooses to interact with a Fleksyapp (or its suggestive pop) they are then interacting with a third party’s API. So the usual tracking caveats apply.
“We interact with the web so there’s tracking everywhere,” admits Plante. “But, per se, there’s not specific sensitive data that is shared suddenly with someone. It is not related with the service itself — with the Fleksy app.”
The key point is that the keyboard user gets to choose which apps they want to use and which they don’t. So they can choose which third parties they want to share their plans and intentions with and which they don’t.
“We’re not interesting in making this an advertising platform where the advertiser decides everything,” emphasizes Plante. “We want this to be really close to the user. So the user decides. My intentions. My sentiment. What I type decides. And that is really our goal. The user is able to power it. He can tap on the suggestion or ignore it. And then if he taps on it it’s a very good quality conversion because the user really wants to access restaurants nearby or explore flights for escaping his daily routine… or transfer money. That could be another use-case for instance.”
They won’t be selling brands a guaranteed number of conversions, either.
That’s clearly very important because — to win over users — Fleksynext suggestions will need to feel telepathically useful, rather than irritating, misfired nag. Though the risk of that seems low given how Fleksy users can customize the keyboard apps to only see stuff that’s useful to them.
“In a sense we’re starting reshape a bit how advertising is seen by putting the user in the center,” suggests Plante. “And giving them a useful means of accessing content. This is the original vision and we’ve been very loyal to that — and we think it can reshape the landscape.”
“When you look into five years from now, the smartphone we have will be really, really powerful — so why process things in the cloud? When you can process things on the phone. That’s what we are betting on: Processing everything on the phone,” he adds.
When the full store launches users will be able to add and delete (any) apps — included preloads. So they will be in the driving seat. (We asked Plante to a confirm the user will be able to delete all apps, including any pre-loadeds and he said yes. So if you take him at his word Fleksy will not be cutting any deals with OEMs or carriers to indelibly preload certain Fleksyapps. Or, to put it another way, crapware baked into the keyboard is most definitely not plan.)
Depending on what other Fleksyapps launch in future a Fleksy keyboard user could choose to add, for example, a search service like DuckDuckGo or France’s Qwant to power a pro-privacy alternative to using Google search in the keyboard. Or they could choose Google.
Again the point is the choice is theirs.
Scaling a keyboard into a platform
The idea of keyboard-as-platform offers at least the possibility of reintroducing the choice and variety of smartphone app stores back before the cynical tricks of attention-harvesting tech giants used their network effects and platform power to throttle the app economy.
The Android keyboard space was also a fertile experiment ground in years past. But it’s now dominated by Google’s Gboard and Microsoft-acquired Swiftkey. Which makes Fleksy the plucky upstart gunning to scale an independent alternative that’s not owned by big tech and is open to any third party that wants to join its mini apps party.
“It will be Bing search for Swiftkey, it will be Google search for Gboard, it will be Google Music, it will be YouTube. But on our side we can have YouTube, we can also have… other services that exist for video. The same way with pictures and the same way for file-sharing and drive. So you have Google Drive but you have Dropbox, you have OneDrive, there’s a lot of services in the cloud. And we want to be the platform that has them all, basically,” says Plante.
The original founding team of the Fleksy keyboard was acqui-hired by Pinterest back in 2016, leaving the keyboard app itself to languish with minimal updates. Then two years ago Barcelona-based keyboard app maker, ThingThing, stepped in to take over development.
Plante confirms it’s since fully acquired the Fleksy keyboard technology itself — providing a solid foundation for the keyboard-as-platform business it’s now hoping to scale with the launch of Fleksyapps.
Talking of scale, he tells us the startup is in the process of raising a multi-million Series A — aiming to close this summer. (ThingThing last took in $800,000 via equity crowdfunding last fall.)
The team’s investor pitch is the keyboard offers perhaps the only viable conduit left on mobile to reset the playing field for brands by offering a route to cut through tech giant walled gardens and get where users are spending most of their time and attention: i.e. typing and sharing stuff with their friends in private one-to-one and group chats.
That means the keyboard-as-platform has the potential to get brands of all stripes back in front of users — by embedding innovative, entertaining and helpful bite-sized utility where it can prove its worth and amass social currency on the dominant messaging platforms people use.
The next step for the rebooted Fleksy team is of course building scale by acquiring users for a keyboard which, as of half a year ago, only had around 1M active users from pure downloads.
Its strategy on this front is to target Android device makers to preload Fleksy as the default keyboard.
ThingThing’s business model is a revenue share on any suggestions the keyboard converts, which it argues represent valuable leads for brands — given the level of contextual intention. It is also intending to charge brands that want to be preloaded on the Fleksy keyboard by default.
Again, though, a revenue share model requires substantial scale to work. Not least because brands will need to see evidence of scale to buy into the Fleksyapps’ vision.
Plante isn’t disclosing active users of the Fleksy keyboard right now. But says he’s confident they’re on track to hit 30M-35M active users this year — on account of around ten deals he says are in the pipeline with device makers to preload Fleksy’s keyboard. (Palm was an early example, as we reported last year.)
The carrot for OEMs to join the Fleksyapps party is they’re cutting them in on the revenue share from user interactions with branded keyboard apps — playing to device makers’ needs to find ways to boost famously tight hardware margins.
“The fact that the keyboard can monetize and provide value to the phone brands — this is really massive for them,” argues Plante. “The phone brands can expect revenue flowing in their bank account because we give the brands distribution and the handset manufacturer will make money and we will make money.”
It’s a smart approach, and one that’s essentially only possible because Google’s own Gboard keyboard doesn’t come preloaded on the majority of Android devices. (Exceptions include its own Pixel brand devices.) So — unusually for a core phone app on Android — there’s a bit of an open door where the keyboard sits, instead of the usual preloaded Google wares. And that’s an opportunity.
Markets wise, ThingThing is targeting OEMs in all global regions with its Fleksy pitch — barring China (which Plante readily admits it too complex for a small startup to sensibly try jumping at).
That antirust decision means mobile makers finally have the chance to unbundle Google apps from devices they sell in the region.
Which translates into growing opportunities for OEMs to rethink their Android strategies. Even as Google remains under pressure not to get in the way by force feeding any more of its wares.
Really, a key component of this shift is that device makers are being told to think, to look around and see what else is out there. For the first time there looks to be a viable chance to profit off of Android without having to preload everything Google wants.
“For us it’s a super good sign,” says Plante of the Commission decision. “Every monopolistic situation is a problem. And the market needs to be fragmented. Because if not we’re just going to lose innovation. And right now Europe — and I see good progress for the US as well — are trying to dismantle the imposed power of those big guys. For the simple evolution of human being and technology and the future of us.”
“I think good things can happen,” he adds. “We’re in talks with handset manufacturers who are coming into Europe and they want to be the most respectful of the market. And with us they have this reassurance that you have a good partner that ensures there’s a revenue stream, there’s a business model behind it, there’s really a strong use-case for users.
“We can finally be where we always wanted to be: A choice, an alternative. But having Google imposing its way since start — and making sure that all the direct competition of Google is just a side, I think governments have now seen the problem. And we’re a winner of course because we’re a keyboard.”
But what about iOS? Plante says the team has plans to bring what they’re building with Fleksy to Apple’s mobile platform too, in time. But for now they’re fully focusing efforts on Android — to push for scale and execute on their vision of staking their claim to be the independent keyboard platform.
Apple has supported third party keyboards on iOS for years. Unfortunately, though, the experience isn’t great — with a flaky toggle to switch away from the default Apple keyboard, combined with heavy system warnings about the risks of using third party keyboards.
Meanwhile the default iOS keyboard ‘just works’ — and users have loads of extra features baked by default into Apple’s native messaging app, iMessage.
Clearly alternative keyboards have found it all but impossible to build any kind of scale in that iOS pincer.
“iOS is coming later because we need to focus on these distribution deals and we need to focus on the brands coming into the platform. And that’s why iOS right now we’re really focusing for later. What we can say is it will come later,” says Plante, adding: “Apple limits a lot keyboards. You can see it with other keyboard companies. It’s the same. The update cycle for iOS keyboard is really, really, really slow.”
Plus, of course, Fleksy being preloaded as a default keyboard on — the team hopes — millions of Android devices is a much more scalable proposition vs just being another downloadable app languishing invisibly on the side lines of another tech giant’s platform.
WhatsApp today announced another protection for users in an effort to clamp down on the spread of fake news and misinformation. Through a new feature, users can control who has permission to add them to groups. The company says this will “help to limit abuse” and keep people’s phone numbers private. Related to this, the app will also introduce an invite system for those who enable the additional protections, allowing users to vet any incoming group invites before deciding to join.
Like other social platforms, WhatsApp has played a role in the spread of fake news. In Brazil, for example, the platform was flooded with falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and other misleading propaganda.
This sort of disinformation doesn’t always arrive through family and friends, but can also come in the form of group chats – in some cases, chats that users were added to against their will.
This is particularly true in one of WhatsApp’s biggest markets, India.
As The WSJ recently reported, India’s political parties often use the app to blast messages to groups organized by caste, income level and religion. The number of hoaxes have skyrocketed as WhatsApp parent Facebook clamped down on fake news. Reports of hoaxes that last year numbered in the dozens per day, having since grown to hundreds per day. And WhatsApp is now removing around 2 million suspicious accounts globally per month, the report said.
Putting users in control of how they’re added to groups could help some, but only if users are inspired to dig into the settings and make the change for themselves.
Ideally, this level of protection should be enabled as the default – not an optional choice.
To enable the new protection, users can go to Settings then tap Account > Privacy > Groups then choose one of the three options regarding who can add you to a group text: “Nobody,” “My Contacts,” or “Everybody.” “Nobody” means you’ll have to approve joining every group to which you’re invited, WhatsApp says, and “My Contacts” means only users you already know can add you to groups.
In the event that you change the setting to either “Nobody” or “My Contacts,” people inviting you to groups will be instead prompted to send a private invite through an individual chat. That way, you still have the option of joining a group even if the person inviting you isn’t one of your regular WhatsApp contacts. However, the invite will expire in 3 days if you don’t accept.
WhatsApp says the new settings roll out to some users today, and will reach the rest of WhatsApp’s audience in the weeks ahead. The most recent version of the app will be required.
Batman’s greatest nemesis has never had a consistent backstory — and honestly, that’s always been part of his appeal. In a medium where origins are everything, the threads of the Joker’s tale are ever bit as twisted as the character himself.
But in an era when even Batman’s butler gets a television show exploring his early life, the only surprise is that a film like Joker didn’t come along sooner. The Todd Phillips (The Hangover trilogy) directed origin story sports a coveted Martin Scorsese executive producer credit, and from the looks of today’s new trailer, it has the iconic filmmaker’s fingerprints all over it.
Joaquin Phoenix stars as the titular supervillain, with an origin story that appears to take more than a few cues from Scorsese’s 1983 masterpiece, The King of Comedy. This version of Arthur Fleck/The Joker is cast as a failed standup, who, naturally, becomes a criminal mastermind. Basically Rupert Pupkin with ICP makeup and an exit strategy.
In the off-chance that the parallels are too subtle, Robert De Niro makes a quick trailer cameo, playing a talk show host. The character likely shares more than a little with Jerry Lewis’ greatest role as asshole late night host Jerry Langford in the Scorsese film, but the shot of De Niro in front of the curtains is 100 percent Pupkin.
It’s a strange cocktail by any measure. It’s likely going to get an R rating. Also Marc Maron is in it for some reason. It’s a DC film, but one that has as much in common with the DC Extended Universe as Fox’s Gotham. And given the consistency of the Zack Snyderpalooza, that’s honestly probably for the best.
TechCrunch’s resident transportation expert Kirsten Korosec and venture capital ax Kate Clark have been on the case, closely following the market’s reaction and the evolving theses around Lyft’s business… Today at 11:00 am PT, Kirsten and Kate will be helping Extra Crunch members understand how investors are thinking about Lyft and will be offering their views on where the company goes from here.
Tune in to join the Lyft debate as it unfolds, as well as for the opportunity to ask Kirsten and Kate any and all things Lyft, transportation, or venture.
Parker Conrad’s last startup Zenefits drowned in busy work. Now with Rippling, he wants to boil that ocean. Instead of trying to nail one thing then expand, “very counter to conventional wisdom, we took on something that’s a lot broader and more ambitious.” That meant spending 2 years with 40 engineers working in stealth to build integrations with nearly every popular business tool to combine HR, IT, and single-sign on services. The result is that when you hire an employee, Rippling onboards them to all those services in a single click. Goodbye, busy work. Hello, gateway to the enterprise app ecosystem.
The past few years have seen a Cambrian explosion of startups building specialty software for office productivity and collaboration. But that’s left customers struggling to get their teams set up on all these fragmented tools. As such, Rippling had a very good first year on the market with rapidly growing revenue. So when Rippling went out to raise money, Conrad was signing terms sheets in just over a week.
$45 million. “I know that rounds are bigger these days but still, for a Series A that’s pretty substantial” Conrad tells me with a wide grin over coffee at San Francisco’s Four Barrel. “We We want to keep doubling down on the engineering, investing and putting more money into R&D, so we have a real product advantages and technology advantages over other players in our space even though a lot of them have been around a lot longer than we have.”
The round was led by Kleiner Perkins and its enterprise guru Mamoon Hamid. A source confirms the round was a stunning $270 million valuation. He was also skeptical about Rippling trying to integrate with everyone before launch. But Hamid says “What was a concern a few years ago is now something we like about the company.” After getting pitched so many piecemeal enterprise solutions, it suddenly clicked for Hamid why customers would want “one stop for everything. You need an independent party to be that glue layer.”
Typically, enterprise software is an unglued mess. Apps don’t talk to each other, so when you hire a new employee, you have to manually add them, their role, their team, their manager, their permissions and more to every single tool your team uses. There’s HR systems that control payroll and benefits, IT systems that determine what equipment you’re issued, productivity and collaboration apps like Slack and Dropbox, and department-specific tools like Salesforce or Github. Conrad believes manually updating these with each hire, fire, or promotion is the source of almost all administrative work at a company.
The willingness to slog through office chores rather than strategically nullify them is why Zenefits grew so fast, then suddenly hit a wall. What can be begrudgingly brute forced at 50 employees becomes impossible to manage at 500 employees. That’s why “We don’t want to have anything that’s not software end to end in the product.” If it requires a client to call Rippling’s operations team for help, it could be built better. That maniacal focus actually allowed Conrad to temporarily hold Rippling’s only role responding to user complaints, which he also credits with propelling rapid iteration. The CEO wants to remain in that mindset, so he still lists his job title on LinkedIn as “Customer Support”.
Rippling only truly began hiring more than engineers when it came out of stealth a year ago. Now the startup has established two lucrative business models. First, it earns reseller fees from other enterprise tool makers when people buy them through the Rippling gateway. Any developer with a well-established brand becomes an integrated Rippling partner. It’s not going to try to out-build Zoom or Mailchimp. “As Rippling is successful, what I think it can do is bring a lot of customers to these other businesses.
Meanwhile, Rippling develops its own in-house versions of undifferentiated parts of the HR and IT stacks like PTO management or commuter benefits. Customers aren’t loyal to a brand in these areas yet, so it’s easy for Rippling to swoop in. And it can charge a similar rate, but beat competitors on convenience because its homegrown systems integrate directly with Rippling’s source of truth on employee details.
Now with its business revving up and plenty of cash to fuel the engine, Conrad tells me his biggest concern is hiring the right people. “The really challenging thing in a company is when the headcount grows too quickly. I’m making sure we don’t do things like more than double headcount in a 12 month period” he tells me. While Zenefits was a mad blitz for scale, Conrad has tried to bias Rippling towards action without being so impulsive that the company makes mistakes. “It’s never easy, but we’re not yet at the scale where things become really scary. We have a little bit more time to hit milestones” he explains about trying to run a business at a more liveable pace while being an active dad too.
Luckily, Zenfits taught him how to avoid many of the pitfalls of entrepreneurship. Conrad concludes that he’s happy to have gone from “playing video games on impossible mode vs medium mode.”
For many, Singapore is an idyllic and livable city in Asia. But there’s serious concern for the country and its five million population around a proposed law to curb ‘fake news’ on the internet that could have ramifications for free speech.
The ‘Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill’ had its first reading on Monday and one of the key takeaways is that it will allow the government to force “corrections” to be added to online content that is deemed to be “false.” Infringing articles won’t be edited, instead “the facts” will be added so that “the facts can travel together with the falsehood.”
The scope of the proposed bill goes beyond media to cover social media platforms, too. Those found to be “malicious actors” face a fine of up to SG$50,000 ($37,000) or five years in prison for their content. If posted using “an inauthentic online account or a bot,” the fine jumps to a maximum of SG$100,000 ($74,000) or a potential 10-year jail term. Platforms such as Facebook or Twitter face fines of up to SG$1 million ($740,000) in such situations.
What’s particularly alarming about the proposal is that it can be activated by any government minister if they believe that “a false statement of fact… has been or is being communicated in Singapore” or if they feel that issuing a correction is “in the public interest.”
The proposed act is focused on Singapore, but it will cover any piece of content worldwide. While, beyond merely covering content pertinent to the security of Singapore, the harmony of its people, its national politics and services, the process can be triggered “in the interest of friendly relations of Singapore with other countries.”
There’s also a clause that covers “a diminution of public confidence in the performance of any duty or function of government” and its associated organizations.
While it is fairly well established that social media and new media content can be a threat to multicultural societies and the democratic process, critics have pointed out that the proposed law has seriously scope to be misused, potentially against valid criticism. While Singapore’s Ministry of Law said it will not cover “opinions, criticisms, satire or parody,” simply defining what is an opinion or opinionated is not easy.
Indeed, an example last year involving Reuters shows the type of pushback that the government could exert if the bill becomes law as is expected — Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) party dominates parliament having won 83 of the 89 seats it contested in the most recent general election in 2015.
Reuters rewrote a contentious headline around a politician’s potential to become Prime Minister following condemnation from Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), which rebuked Reuters running with a “fabricated headline.” The publication later changed the headline and parts of its story, as Cherian George — the author of a 2012 book on Singapore’s political system — explained in a recent blog post.
In this case, however, the law covers content produced outside Singapore, which could make its application messy, particularly if media companies covering international topics are caught in the crosshairs and they have employees located in Singapore.
Despite footnotes that try to untangle the policing of accurate content with censoring free speech — “the bill targets falsehoods, not free speech,” a press release issued by the ministry claims — free speech groups are concerned at the potentially immense power that would be wielded.
“Singapore’s ministers should not have the power to singlehandedly decree what is true and what is false,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement. “Given Singapore’s long history of prohibiting speech critical of the government, its policies or its officials, its professed concerns about ‘online falsehoods’ and alleged election manipulation are farcical.”
Blogger Roy Ngerngwas sued by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong after the blogger accused him of misusing public funds, a sensitive issue for officials in the city-state known to have the least corrupt governments in Asia (Photo credit: MOHD FYROL/AFP/Getty Images)
That was echoed by the Asia Internet Coalition, a group that represents Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Line and others.
“We are concerned that the proposed legislation gives the Singapore government full discretion over what is considered true or false. As the most far-reaching legislation of its kind to date, this level of overreach poses significant risks to freedom of expression and speech, and could have severe ramifications both in Singapore and around the world,” read a statement from AIC managing director Jeff Paine.
“Prescriptive legislation should not be the first solution in addressing what is a highly nuanced and complex issue,” Paine added.
Human Rights Watch’s 2017 report concluded that Singapore’s press is “not free.” Reporters Without Borders, another organization that tracks media freedom worldwide, ranked Singapore 151th out of 180 countries. The organization cited an “intolerant government” and media “self-censorship” among its top line conclusions. The proposed law could take things a step further.
Identity management software provider Okta, which went public two years ago in what was one of the first pure-cloud subscription-based company IPOs, wants to fund the next generation of identity, security and privacy startups.
At its big customer conference Oktane, where the company has also announced a new level of identity protection at the server level, chief operating officer Frederic Kerrest (pictured above, right, with chief executive officer Todd McKinnon) will unveil a $50 million investment fund meant to back early-stage startups leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain technology.
“We view this as a natural extension of what we are doing today,” Okta senior vice president Monty Gray told TechCrunch. Gray was hired last year to oversee corporate development, i.e. beef up Okta’s M&A strategy.
Gray and Kerrest tell TechCrunch that Okta Ventures will invest capital in existing Okta partners, as well as other companies in the burgeoning identity management ecosystem. The team managing the fund will look to Okta’s former backers, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock, for support in the deal sourcing process.
Okta Ventures will write checks sized between $250,000 and $2 million to eight to 10 early-stage businesses per year.
“It’s just a way of making sure we are aligning all our work and support with the right companies who have the right vision and values because there’s a lot of noise around identity, ML and AI,” Kerrest said. “It’s about formalizing the support strategy we’ve had for years and making sure people are clear of the fact we are helping these organizations build because it’s helpful to our customers.”
Okta Ventures’ first bet is Trusted Key, a blockchain-based digital identity platform that previously raised $3 million from Founders Co-Op. Okta’s investment in the startup, founded by former Microsoft, Oracle and Symantec executives, represents its expanding interest in the blockchain.
“Blockchain as a backdrop for identity is cutting edge if not bleeding edge,” Gray said.
Okta, founded in 2009, had raised precisely $231 million from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, Khosla Ventures, Floodgate and others prior to its exit. The company’s stock has fared well since its IPO, debuting at $17 per share in 2017 and climbing to more than $85 apiece with a market cap of $9.6 billion as of Tuesday closing.
Adobe today announced that it is bringing content-aware fill to After Effects, the special effects software that is part of its Creative Cloud offering. The company has long offered this feature in Photoshop, where you can use it to automatically remove objects from a photo, with the application filling in the blank space with appropriate pixels, based on what’s around it. As you can imagine, doing this for a video is significantly harder because you have to do this for every image while the objects move.
The company notes that this new feature is powered by Adobe Sensei, the company’s AI platform. To remove an object (or maybe a stray boom mic) from a scene is to mask it. If everything works as planned, the tools will automatically track the object through a scene (even when it moves behind another object for a bit) and replace it with more suitable pixels. If you need to fine-tune the result, you can also use Photoshop to create reference frames.
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Adobe notes that content-aware fill is also a very useful tool for 360-degree VR projects, where you can’t always hide everything around the camera.
With the annual NAB show coming up next week, Adobe is also launching a plethora of other video updates for both After Effects and Premiere Pro. Some of those focus on workflow improvement, including the new Freeform Project panel that lets you arrange assets visually and improved audio tools (which now also feature Auto Ducking for ambient sound in Audition and Premiere Pro).
As usual, Adobe also worked hard on improving the overall performance of its applications. GPU rendering in Premiere can significantly cut down export times, for example, and mask tracking is now up to 38 times faster for 8K videos (and up to 4x faster for HD scenes).
Video is experiencing a golden age as video professionals across broadcast, film, streaming services and digital marketing are facing higher consumer demand for content creation. Meanwhile, production timelines are shorter and the list of deliverables are longer,” said Steven Warner, vice president of Digital Video and Audio at Adobe. “Through optimized performance and intelligent new features powered by Adobe Sensei, video professionals can cut out more tedious production tasks to focus on their creative vision.”
And here’s a bonus for Twitch streamers: they can now use Character Animator to create real-time animation, similar to many of the live animations you may have seen on the Colbert Show (which uses this tool).
Two of the issues limiting blockchain adoption in the enterprise has been lack of scalability and privacy. Offchain Labs, a startup that spun out of research at Princeton, wants to help create more scalable smart contracts while shifting part of the process off of the public blockchain to increase privacy. Today, the company announced a $3.7M seed round led by Pantera Capital.
Compound VC, Raphael Ouzan of Blocknation, Jake Seid, managing director at Stone Bridge Ventures and other unnamed investors also participated.
The startup has created a protocol called Arbitrum that helps developers scale smart contracts in a way that’s difficult to do right now, says company co-founder Ed Felten. “We’re working to build a platform for smart contract development that provides what we think developers want, a combination of scalability so that you can scale to more transactions per second, more users, and to contracts that have more code and still have more data in them,” he explained.
In addition to scalability, the company believes that companies want a way to business without sharing everything they are doing, as is required on a public chain. “The second thing we think people want is privacy, meaning control over who gets to see what’s happening in their contract. So you don’t have to publish everything about your contracts, your code and everything it does on a public chain in order to get your work done.”
The last piece related to that is trust. “Our platform offers what we call the ‘Any Trust Guarantee’, which means that when you launch or deploy your contract, you specify a set of validators for it. And the guarantee we give you is that as long as at least one validator is acting honestly, your contract will execute correctly, no matter how evil or inattentive the other validators are,” Felten said.
The company was born out of research at Princeton University and began with what Felten called an academic prototype created in their labs. Felten is a computer science professor at Princeton, and also served as Deputy CTO to the White House under President Obama,
Those credentials and the prototype showed enough to attract investors. Today, the company is hoping to use the money to complete a Beta version of Arbitrum. He wouldn’t commit to a timeline, but said the product is close.
While Felten recognizes he is competing with giants like IBM and SAP in the enterprise blockchain space, he believes that the startup has come up with a solution to a persistent problem for blockchain developers, and they are releasing the protocol as open source to make it even more attractive.
