way to shortcut

Car brands are looking to tap into the country’s heightened health concerns to help kick-start flagging sales. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2y770q9

By BY KAREN WEISE from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/2xrY3Hw

A trend that sees lighter-skinned people artificially darken their skin tone has caused a backlash. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2y6e3zk

Apple and Google ask for developer feedback on their contact tracing efforts, Facebook sees a “significant reduction” in ads and Microsoft makes life easier for IT managers. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 30, 2020. 1. Apple and Google release first seed of COVID-19 exposure notification API for contact tracing app developers This is a developer-focused release, and it’s a seed of the API in development, with the primary intent of collecting feedback from developers who will be using the API to create new contact tracing and notification apps on behalf of public health agencies. Apple and Google first announced the combined API and eventual system-level contact tracing feature on April 10, and intend to release the first version of the API publicly in mid-May, with system-level integration to follow in the coming months. The tech is designed to be privacy-preserving, ensuring that contact IDs are rotating and randomized, and never tied to an individual’s specific identifying

Joe Biden’s campaign this morning announced that it has chosen a team to vet potential running mates for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The four-person committee three high-profile Democratic politicians: Senator Chris Dodd, Congresswoman Lisa Blunt and Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, who has been in the spotlight recently, as his city has grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic. Also on the list is Cynthia Hogan, who has been Apple’s Vice President for Public Policy and Government Affairs since May 2016. “Cynthia’s intellect and judgment have consistently distinguished her as a uniquely talented professional and we’re lucky to have her join the team at Apple,” Apple’s Lisa Jackson said when she joined. The D.C.-based executive’s experience with politics — and Biden specifically — dates back well before that. Prior to reentering the corporate world, Hogan served as Biden’s Chief Counsel — first during his time in the Senate and then as Vice President. Hogan al

Traditionally dominated by big players like Adobe and Autodesk, the world of design has been flush with a newer wave of startups that are creating collaboration spaces and new cloud-based tools designed to address the needs of creatives today. Today, two of those players are combining. Dribbble , an online community for designers that lets them post their work and look for work, is acquiring Creative Market , a marketplace for ready-to-use fonts, icons, illustrations, photos and other design assets. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, Dribbble’s CEO Zack Onisko said in an interview. Prior to this, bootstrapped Dribbble was profitable — revenues come from its job boards, advertising and member subscriptions, kind of like a LinkedIn aimed at the design community — and it had 6 million monthly active users, with 3.5 million registered users. Adding in Creative Market will bring the total number of monthly active users across the two sites to 12 million. The acquisitio

Content reviewers can return to work on a voluntary basis, Facebook tells MPs. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/35hD9r7

A trial with the Irish health authority uses drones to bring prescriptions straight to the door. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2Sp3e2d

BBC Click's Marc Cieslak speaks to creative director Ashraf Ismail about the Viking-themed game. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2yS3m3f

The Fund , an early-stage investment firm with a memorably straightforward name, is looking beyond New York City as it starts investing its second fund. Founders Jenny Fielding (who’s also managing director at Techstars New York ) and Scott Hartley (also co-founder and partner at Two Culture Capital) told me that in the past two years, they’ve already backed 52 New York City startups. “The seed funds in New York have all gone upstream,” Fielding argued, making it harder for founders to get the smaller checks they need when they’re getting started. So The Fund is aiming to participate in those “first check” rounds of between $500,000 and $1.2 million. To find those investments, Fielding and Hartley said rely on a “crowdsourced” approach, taking recommendations from the startup founders that they’ve recruited as limited partners in The Fund — a group that includes names like General Assembly founder Matthew Brimer, One Medical founder Tom Lee, Handy co-founder Oisin Hanrahan, SoundC

The tech industry experienced turmoil before during the dot-com bust and again during the 2008 economic downturn. But this time it’s a bit different, according to Kapor Capital founding partners Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor. “What’s different this time is that it is society-wide,” Kapor Klein said during an Extra Crunch Live appearance this week. “It’s not just the dot-com bust or its not just financial services. It is much more widespread. But again, as you point out, tech is in a much better position because tech is related to the things that are thriving.” For Kapor, formerly a partner at a Sand Hill Road VC firm during the dot-com bust, said it’s similar in that it’s an “enormous disruption with great uncertainty about what will be on the other side of it.” The details, however, are very different. Assuming there will eventually be a vaccine, Kapor said he believes things will be able to get back to some sort of normal, “notwithstanding the irrecoverable disruptions of pe

Material Bank , a logistics platform for the architectural and design industry, has announced the close of a $28 million Series B financing today, led by Bain Capital Ventures . Bain’s Merritt Hummer led the round on behalf of the firm and will join the board of directors at Material Bank, along with Jeff Sine, cofounder and partner at The Raine Group . Existing investors Raine Ventures and Starwood Capital Group cofounder, Chairman and CEO Barry Sternlicht also participated in the round. Material Bank launched in January 2019, founded by Adam I. Sandow. Its platform is meant to serve designers, architects and others who source and purchase the very building blocks of our physical world: materials. Most architectural firms and designers have their own physical library of materials in their office, like carpet swatches, wall covering samples, tiles, and hardwoods for flooring. These libraries are nearly impossible to keep up to date — not only do styles change over time (just like

Tech firms will help the NHS spot where kit is running scarce, but privacy campaigners are concerned. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2yRQ7zz

Even before the COVID-19 shutdown, venture funding rounds and total deal volume of VC funding for esports were down noticeably from the year prior. The space received a lot of attention in 2017 and 2018 as leagues formed, teams raised money and surging popularity fostered a whole ecosystem of new companies. Last year featured some big fundraises, but esports wasn’t the hot new thing in the tech world anymore. This unexpected, compulsory work-from-home era may drive renewed interest in the space, however, as a larger market of consumers discover esports and more potential entrepreneurs identify pain points in their experience. To track where new startups could arise this year, I asked seven VCs who pay close attention to the esports market where they see opportunities at the moment: Peter Levin, Griffin Gaming Partners Beth Ferriera, Firstmark Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Venture Partners Jens Hilgers, BitKraft Ventures Doug Higgins, Sapphire Sport Rick Yang, NEA Kevin Baxpehler,

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today we’re taking our final look back at Q1 venture capital through the lens of AI-focused startups. New data out this week paints a mixed picture of the AI startup landscape. Venture dollar volume in Q1 was pretty good, though there was weakness in certain startup stages. Exit data was weak, however, and some Q1 numbers were juiced by a single deal. AI-focused startups have grown past their history as the hot new thing (remember when every new tech company was doing AI for 45 minutes?) into a more mature niche; TechCrunch has spent a reasonable amount of time digging into their economics , and just this week a new, $180 million AI-focused fund caught our attention . In the post-hype days, then, let’s check in on what global AI startups got done with investors in Q1. We’re leaning on this report from CB Insights , which breaks down the quarter’s numbers for us. Let

The museum mistook a Turkish copyright notice for the name of a postcard-printing company. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2Yf8IQO

Meet Biloba , a French startup that wants to leverage tech to make it easier to keep your children healthy. The company recently launched a new mobile app that lets you chat with a doctor whenever you want between 8 AM and 8 PM. This way, if you have questions about your kids, you can get a quick answer. Of course, a text conversation will never replace a visit to the pediatrician. But chances are you have a ton of questions, especially if you’re a first-time parent. Instead of browsing obscure discussion forums, you can go straight to a doctor. Biloba isn’t working with pediatricians specifically. The company is also partnering with nurses and general practitioners. Eventually, the service is going to cost €10 per month but the company is waving fees during the lockdown. After just three weeks, the startup managed to attract 4,000 users with around 200 conversations per day. Compared to other telemedicine services in France, such as Doctolib , Biloba doesn’t rely on video consul

Prague based Resistant AI has nabbed a $2.75M seed round. The security startup’s machine learning technology is designed to be deployed on top of AI systems used for financial decision making to protect customers in markets such as financial services and ecommerce from attacks such as targeted manipulation, adversarial machine learning and advanced fraud. The seed round was co-led by Index Ventures (Jan Hammer) and Credo Ventures (Ondrej Bartos and Vladislav Jez). Seedcamp also participating, along with Daniel Dines, CEO of UiPath; Michal Pechoucek, CTO of Avast and other unnamed angel investors. Bartos joins the board of directors on behalf of the investors. The startup sells an additional layer of protection that’s specifically designed for tightening security around automated functions such as credit risk scoring and anti-money laundering by using tech to detect fake documents that feed such systems. Its tech is also aimed at uncovering suspicious patterns of transactions whic

By BY SHEERA FRENKEL AND DAVEY ALBA from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/2KIszzX

Extreme E teams will field one female and one male driver during races when the new climate aware racing series begins in 2021. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2KI0Dfo

Millions in the UK will soon be asked to download an app that helps to limit coronavirus spreading. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2zIPOaN

Jack Maynard, Lady Leshurr and Big Narstie are among the names raising cash for the NHS. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2ycVskT

Thermal cameras can spot people with a temperature. Will they help to end the lockdown? from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3f37YnQ

The US government places some of the online shopping giant’s websites on its “notorious markets” list. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3f5fkqU

Naomi Osaka and the Williams sisters will play and be live-streamed on Facebook's gaming platform. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3aORrAr

Stripe and Shopify have transformed the face of commerce for small business users, yet when it comes to putting that cash somewhere, SMBs have found that the banking options aren’t quite as transformative. Wise is a new challenger bank built specifically for small businesses. The startup is aiming to insert itself as an essential service in the small business repertoire by bundling banking with payment services powered by Stripe. Customers can receive payments, manage their cash and pay employees all via Wise’s app. CEO Arjun Thyagarajan tells TechCrunch that his company has closed a $5.7 million seed round led by Base10 Partners . Abstract Ventures, Backend Capital, The Fund and Two Culture Capital also participated in the round. While the advent of challenger banks has helped drive plenty of innovation on the consumer banking side, says Rexhi Dollaku, a principal at Base10 who led the Wise deal, “very little of that innovation has happened in the business banking context.” Thya

The streaming giant says it is weathering the crisis - but some analysts are unconvinced. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3bUNUCg

Apple and Google have released the very first version of their exposure notification API, which they previously called the contact tracing API . This is a developer-focused release, and is a seed of the API in development with the primary intent of collecting feedback from developers who will be using the API to create new contract tracing and notification apps on behalf of public health agencies. Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook told EU Commissioner Thierry Breton that the API would be arriving shortly, and this version is indeed now available – albeit to a specific and limited group that includes select developers working on behalf of public health authorities globally, according to the companies. This is a test release that’s intended to provide the opportunity for development and feedback in advance of the API’s public release in mid-May, at which time developers will be able to use the software feature on devices with publicly available apps released through the iOS and Google so

The year’s already off to a rocky start for hardware companies, and we’re only beginning to see the true impact COVID-19 will ultimately have on the market. Arm — the UK company behind the designs of chips for everyone form Apple to Qualcomm to Samsung — is hoping to kickstart developing by offering up access to around 75% of its chip portfolio for free to qualified startups. The move marks an expansion of the company company’s Flexible Access program. With it, Arm will open access to its IP for early stage startups. While some of the biggest companies pay the chip designer big bucks for that information, the cost can be prohibitive for those just starting out. “In today’s challenging business landscape, enabling innovation is critical – now more than ever, startups with brilliant ideas need the fastest, most trusted route to success and scale,” SVP Dipti Vachani, said in a statement. “Arm Flexible Access for Startups offers new silicon entrants a faster, more cost-efficient path to

Chinese electric vehicle startup Nio has secured a $1 billion investment from several state-owned companies in Hefei in return for agreeing to establish headquarters in the city’s economic development hotspot and giving up a stake in one of its business units. The injection of capital comes from several investors, including Hefei City Construction and Investment Holding Group, CMG-SDIC Capital and Anhui Provincial Emerging Industry Investment Co. Nio’s factory is already in Hefei, which it operates with Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group. However, the company’s headquarters and other operations are in Shanghai about 300 miles from the Anhui provincial city. Under this agreement, Nio will locate all of its Chinese operations, including R&D, sales, service and supply chain, in the Hefei Economic and Technological Development Area. The investment is another important milestone of Nio for its long-term growth, Nio said in a statement Wednesday. “After receiving the investments from

By BY SHIRA OVIDE from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/2Yj8aZZ

Bradley Tusk Contributor Bradley Tusk is the founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures . More posts by this contributor In London, Uber has won the battle but risks losing the war Shockingly, Congress acted responsibly in regulating autonomous cars… So what’s next? Every time we realize something new about the coronavirus, it’s always worse than we thought: maybe we don’t develop immunity to it; maybe six feet of social distancing isn’t far enough; maybe the spread won’t wane in warmer weather. Every time we realize something new about the economy, it’s equally bleak: maybe we can’t safely reopen for months (Georgia and South Carolina notwithstanding), maybe unemployment will top Great Depression levels, maybe travel won’t resume till mid-2021, maybe most of the businesses who have shuttered their doors will never return. But like everything in life, within all of the bad, there’s usually some good too. And for businesses who have to deal with regulation, this may be an unusual

Bradley Tusk Contributor Bradley Tusk is the founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures . More posts by this contributor In London, Uber has won the battle but risks losing the war Shockingly, Congress acted responsibly in regulating autonomous cars… So what’s next? Every time we realize something new about the coronavirus, it’s always worse than we thought: maybe we don’t develop immunity to it; maybe six feet of social distancing isn’t far enough; maybe the spread won’t wane in warmer weather. Every time we realize something new about the economy, it’s equally bleak: maybe we can’t safely reopen for months (Georgia and South Carolina notwithstanding), maybe unemployment will top Great Depression levels, maybe travel won’t resume till mid-2021, maybe most of the businesses who have shuttered their doors will never return. But like everything in life, within all of the bad, there’s usually some good too. And for businesses who have to deal with regulation, this may be an unusual

Machine learning has quickly gone from niche field to crucial component of innumerable software stacks, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The tools needed to create and manage it are enterprise-grade and often enterprise-only — but Determined AI aims to make them more accessible than ever by open-sourcing its entire AI infrastructure product. The company created its Determined Training Platform for developing AI in an organized, reliable way — the kind of thing that large companies have created (and kept) for themselves, the team explained when they raised a $11 million Series A last year . Determined AI nabs $11M Series A to democratize AI development “Machine learning is going to be a big part of how software is developed going forward. But in order for companies like Google and Amazon to be productive, they had to build all this software infrastructure,” said CEO Evan Sparks. “One company we worked for had 70 people building their internal tools for AI. There just aren’t th

Atlassian is about as ubiquitous to software engineers as Google is to the rest of us. The Sydney-based company, which launched in 2002, develops tools and services for enterprise collaboration and marched efficiently to a public offering in 2015. So it goes without saying that we’re thrilled to have Atlassian cofounder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes join us at Disrupt SF 2020 , which runs September 14 to September 16. As far as entrepreneurship goes, Cannon-Brookes is on a very short list of founders who have led a company from founding to public offering, and all the steps in between. Atlassian was one of the early players in enterprise collaboration, particularly for engineering and development teams, and has over the years introduced a robust product suite including Jira, Confluence, and Hipchat. Cannon-Brookes has been at the helm for the entire journey, from raising early funding to product development to acquisitions (including Trello) to public offering and beyond. All th

23andMe. MongoDB. Eventbrite. Evernote. Bird. Square . Tumblr. Unity. YouTube. Xoom. Roelof Botha has had a seat on each of these companies’ boards, but his list of investments is much, much longer. The Sequoia partner and managing director is legendary in Silicon Valley and the broader tech world, and we’re very excited that he’s joining us for an upcoming episode of Extra Crunch Live that will air on Wednesday, May 6th at 2pm ET/11am PT. Extra Crunch members may join the Zoom call or view the broadcast live (or on demand) on YouTube. If you’re not already a member, you can join here . Before Botha graduated from Stanford, he had joined the ranks of the PayPal mafia, serving as the fintech startup’s director of corporate development. He climbed the ranks to vice president of finance and was eventually named CFO in 2001. He was just 28 went PayPal went public in 2002. Following PayPal’s sale to eBay, Botha left the company to join Sequoia Capital in January of 2003; since then

Continuing our week’s coverage of new venture funds , this morning let’s dig into Kickstart’s latest capital pool. Kickstart Seed Fund , based in Utah’s Salt Lake City, has raised a $110 million Fund V it announced this morning, its largest to date. The firm’s rise to investing prominence has largely coincided with Utah’s own emergence as a technology hub, with the pair’s success intertwined since the financial crisis when the fund was put together. Founded in 2008, when Utah was far from known as a technology hub—let alone a printing press for billion-dollar startups — the firm has invested in over 100 companies and has seen 20 exits, Kickstart told TechCrunch in an interview. The seed fund has backed firms like Podium , which recently raised $125 million at a unicorn valuation , and Lucid , which recently raised a $52 round itself and is also a unicorn . Those rounds come to mind as they were both announced this year, and each saw the firm in question announce that it had creste