Jan
07

Ledger announces next-generation cryptocurrency hardware wallet

French startup Ledger unveiled its new hardware wallet to manage your cryptocurrencies. The Ledger Nano X is a Bluetooth-enabled wallet, which means that you’ll be able to send and receive tokens from your phone.

The previous version of the device required you to plug the key to your computer using a microUSB cable in order to execute an order. Switching to Bluetooth and opening it up to smartphones is the next logical step.

Ledger is going to launch a full-fledged mobile app called Ledger Live. You’ll find the same features as the ones in the desktop app. You’ll be able to install new apps, check your balances and manage transactions.

The app will be available on January 28th and existing Ledger users will be able to check their balances in read-only mode thanks to public addresses (in case you’re not using Spot). Ledger has sold 1.5 million Ledger Nano S so far. And it sounds like other companies will be able to build mobile apps that work with your Nano X.

The Nano X looks more or less like the Nano S. It’s a USB key-shaped device with a screen and a couple of buttons. The screen is now slightly bigger.

One of the main issues with the Nano S is that you were limited to 18 different cryptocurrencies. You can now store up to 100 different crypto assets on the Nano X — the device supports 1,100 different tokens overall.

Just like other Ledger devices, the private keys never leave your Ledger wallet. It means that even if your computer or mobile phone get hacked, hackers won’t be able to grab your crypto assets.

The company is presenting the new device at CES, I’ll try to play with it to see how it works when it comes to pairing, battery life, etc.

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Jan
07

Fitness marketplace ClassPass acquires competitor GuavaPass

ClassPass, the five-year-old fitness marketplace startup with $239 million in financing, is acquiring competitor GuavaPass, which was founded by Rob Pachter and Jeffrey Liu in 2015.

ClassPass is in the midst of an expansion sprint, both domestically and internationally. The company is hyper-focused on Asian markets, where GuavaPass had carved out its own place with 75 studio partners across 11 cities, including Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Mumbai, Shanghai and Singapore.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This is not ClassPass’s first acquisition. In 2014, ClassPass acquired competitor FitMob. But CEO Fritz Lanman says that this is less about competition and more about opportunity.

“The GuavaPass founders reached out to us,” he told TechCrunch. “They said that they were raising more money and had some options developing but that they felt they could continue working on their original mission as a part of ClassPass. They are really missionaries for the space.”

ClassPass will be bringing on about half of the GuavaPass team as part of the acquisition. However, Lanman doesn’t expect to do many acquisitions in the future, saying that “acquisition isn’t a part of the company’s expansion strategy.”

Alongside regularly planned expansion, the acquisition now puts ClassPass in more than 80 markets across the 11 countries, with plans to expand to 50 new cities in 2019.

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Jan
06

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Nihal Mehta of ENIAC Ventures (Part 5) - Sramana Mitra

Nihal Mehta: We like un-sexy industries. I’m looking at a construction company that’s storing construction history on the Blockchain. When people say they’re using Blockchain, more often than not,...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Jul
09

Activists marched outside of the Salesforce headquarters in San Francisco to protest the company's contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CRM)

Don't let Friday's torrid rally fool you. Tech stocks are in a whole heap of trouble.

Sure, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index soared as much as 5% on Friday, but it's still down a whopping 17% from a record high reached in late August.

The reasons are plentiful. The most recent shot across tech's bow came this past week, when Apple shockingly cut its sales forecast, citing an economic slowdown in China and lingering trade-war tensions. That dragged Apple's stock down as much as 10% in a single day, bringing it almost 40% from all-time highs.

Facebook experienced a growth scare of its own back in mid-2018, when the company also warned of a significant slowdown in revenue expansion. That whole ordeal set Facebook shares back 19% in a single trading session. And have yet to recover, still down 37% from those July levels.

Those are just the sector's two lightning rods. They both have entire ecosystems of smaller firms that depend on their continued strength for their own sustainability.

Not to mention other tech companies are exposed to the exact same risks as Apple and Facebook. At this point it's just a matter of when they issue their own slowdown warnings, and then receive the subsequent market beatdown.

And then there's the matter of the sector's valuations, which have come down from eye-bleeding territory, but still remain elevated relative to history. No matter how you slice it, tech is vulnerable.

Read more: We interviewed Wall Street's 8 top-performing investors to get their best ideas for 2019

Unfortunately for those still holding out hope, one expert sees the damage in tech getting even worse. That would be Vincent Deluard, a macro strategist at INTL FCStone. In a recent report entitled "The Age of Technology Is Over," he argues that tech's long-running stretch of dominance will soon be over.

He traces tech's alleged fall from grace back to Sept. 28, 2018, which the "information technology" sector was split between "consumer discretionary" (eBay, Netflix) and "telecommunications services" (Facebook, Google).

"Portfolio re-balancing may have destabilized markets, but I think the more important consequence of the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) change was the public admission that technology is no longer special," Deluard wrote in a recent note to clients.

Deluard attributes tech's loss of luster to the incorporation of technology into long-standing, "old economy" businesses. That means a company like Walmart, which has adapted admirably to the e-commerce era, and now generates roughly the same level of sales online as Apple.

He also questions why Netflix is trading at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio that's nearly six times that of Disney, since both companies "use technology to tell stories." The same skepticism expands to the auto industry, where Deluard shakes his head at Tesla's outsized valuation when compared to other luxury automakers like BMW.

But perhaps the most damning attribute of tech stocks is that — even after briefly tumbling into a bear market — they're still commanding a 16% premium over the S&P 500 on a forward price-to-earnings basis. Sure, that figure has come way down, but it's still a major leg up. The chart below shows this dynamic in action.

Deluard expects this ongoing repricing to continue in earnest throughout 2019, which would mean more deep selling across the tech sector. In his concluding remarks, he pulls no punches.

"If technology is everywhere, the tech sector no longer exists," Deluard said. "If the tech sector no longer exists, its premium is no longer justified."

INTL FCStone

Original author: Joe Ciolli

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Jan
06

A further £18M funding lands on Gousto’s plate

Gousto, the U.K. cook-at-home meal kit service that competes most directly with HelloFresh, has raised a further £18 million in funding. The round is backed by Instagram “health influencer” Joe Wicks, along with existing investors Unilever Ventures, Hargreave Hale, BGF Ventures, MMC Ventures, and Angel CoFund.

The new funding brings the total raised by Gousto to £75 million since being founded in 2012, and follows a £28.5 million fund raise last March, which it used to invest in its machine learning and factory automation.

The startup also recently launched a customer-facing AI recipe recommendation tool, through which half of customer orders are now placed. Gousto says it will continue to prioritize the majority of its investment in technology to accelerate growth.

In a call, Gousto founder and CEO Timo Boldt told me the startup is now delivering over 1.5 million meals a month to customers, and is seeing 170 percent year-on-year growth. However, he declined to break out specific customer numbers, monthly active or otherwise.

Noteworthy, Gousto says two-thirds of customers are families, and Boldt says this proves that a meal kit service that offers the right mixture of choice, personalization and, crucially, price point, can become a viable alternative to the weekly grocery shop for busy families.

The thinking behind meal kit services more generally is that because they send you correctly portioned fresh ingredients matched to each recipe, you save money by only buying what is needed.

Meanwhile, the services themselves have the potential to run a lot more efficiently than a national grocery store chain’s offline or online offering, including throwing significantly less food away.

To that end, Boldt says that Gousto offers more choice to customers than competitors and is further ahead in terms of driving factory and logistics efficiencies through the use of automation and data. The meal kit service offers over 30 weekly recipes and delivers 7 days per a week. It also claims the shortest lead time of 3 days, and the lowest price point, starting at £2.98 per meal.

The investment in Gousto by “body coach” Joe Wicks is also worth noting, as the startup places more emphasis on healthy eating. The pair had already announced they are working together and this month will launch a co-branded range of nutritious meal kits. This will see a minimum of four new Wicks-branded recipes offered per week, including Joe’s Veggie Spag Bol’ and Satay Chicken Lettuce Wraps, along with Herby Crusted Fish, Root Veg Chips & Peas, and 10-Min Nifty Veggie Noodles.

Cue statement from Wicks: “It was clear from when I first approached Gousto that they were a purpose driven business, with a passion for getting more people cooking and in turn improving the health of the nation. As a customer before becoming an investor, I know that Gousto is having a lasting and hugely positive impact on the way families consume and eat food. I’m delighted to join forces and offer my knowledge to a company who has brought huge and much-needed innovation to an industry”.

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Jan
06

One of the West's biggest cybersecurity vulnerabilities is our idiotic habit of sending servers full of sensitive information to foreign countries

Western companies routinely abandon confidential, sensitive, and personally identifying information to private companies in foreign countries when they upgrade their servers, workstations, and networking gear for new hardware, a source tells Business Insider.

The unprotected data is a goldmine for hackers.

The source, based in Romania, approached us after reading our December 22 article on whether hackers had the ability to take entire countries offline. The source runs an IT hardware refurbishment company that buys up old equipment from countries such as Spain, the Benelux area, and the UK, and sells it to customers who don't need top-spec equipment. Typically he is buying truckloads of old servers, "stuff that is past its prime or out of warranty, but it is still perfectly usable. The procedure is simple: hardware comes in, gets evaluated, fixed, wiped, sold," the source says.

The problem, our source says, is that even when the incoming hardware has been marked as being already wiped clean it often is not.

A "mostly complete" directory of "passwords for a major European aerospace manufacturer"

"Over the last 3 years I have found a lot of crazy things," the source says, including:

A mostly complete database of the Dutch public health insurance system, with social security data, billing, addresses, medical histories. "Imagine the social engineering scams you could do with this data," the source says. Codes, software and procedures for the traffic lights and railway signalling "for a few major Spanish cities." "Imagine the potentially deadly effects of this getting where it shouldn't," he adds. Customer credit card data including addresses and shopping habits for a major UK supermarket chain. And, alarmingly, "a mostly complete (and as far as I could tell, still up to date and functional) employee directory with access codes / badges / smartcards / passwords for a major European aerospace manufacturer."

Our source asked for anonymity because his company and its clients would be angered if their identities appeared in an article about lax security.

But two independent sources with industrial cybersecurity expertise — Nir Giller, the CTO of CyberX and Darktrace Director of Technology Andrew Tonschev — both confirmed to Business Insider that the Romanian source's scenario was both common and plausible.

"Right now, I'm looking at the sensor listing, their IP's and access data"

"Even now, I am processing the remains of a server farm that until a month or so ago, was part of a power company in France," our source says. The buyer noted the ability of hackers to burn down factories simply by accessing unprotected systems which control things like temperature sensors that prevent equipment from burning out. "Guess what, data [from the French company] is still there," the source claims. "Right now, I'm looking at the sensor listing, their IP's and access data. Obviously, I'm sanitizing everything before passing it on, but it never should have gotten into my hands in the first place."

The source says that sometimes the data he finds is so critical that he contacts the originating company to alert them to that they have a problem with security. "In most cases the reaction was one of disbelief, 'no, it cannot happen to us, we're well protected!'"

As more companies lease server space, fewer of them know what happens when those leases end

The problem exists because of the way server space is discarded by large corporations. Few companies want the bother of maintaining their own server farms. So they lease space from specialists. At the end of a lease, companies can walk away from their contracts — leaving the servers with the vendor, which is supposed to carefully destroy the data. Alternatively, when older servers reach the end of their warranty they are replaced in "forklift" upgrades, en masse. In both cases, the disused servers are supposed to be wiped by certified experts using special software and approved processes. In reality, it's quicker to skip steps, or not do it properly, or let mistakes go. The result is that the original data is often accessible even when an old server has been certified clean.

"The West is failing at an institutional level to keep their critical data safe," the source says "No need for CSI-worthy hacking stories, just a credit card to buy up your used hardware - odds are the data will be still there, even if someone marked them as already wiped."

Original author: Jim Edwards

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Jun
27

'Fortnite: Battle Royale' just got a huge new update — here's the new mode and weapons

If you have a job today, there’s a good chance you personally reached out to your employer and interviewed with other humans to get it. Now that you’ve been there a while, it’s also likely the workday feels more like a long slog than the fulfilling career move you had envisioned.

But if today’s early-stage startups have their way, your next employment experience could be quite different.

First, forget the networking and interview gauntlet. Instead, let an AI-enabled screening program reach out about a job you don’t seem obviously qualified to do. Or, rather than talk to a company’s employees, wait for them to play some online games instead. If you play similarly, they may decide to hire you.

Once you have the job, software will also make you more efficient and happier at your work.

An AI-driven software platform will deliver regular “nudges,” offering customized suggestions to make you a more effective worker. If you’re feeling burned out, head online to text or video chat with a coach or therapist. Or perhaps you’ll just be happier in your job now that your employer is delivering regular tokens of appreciation.

Those are a few of the ways early-stage startups are looking to change the status quo of job-seeking and employment. While employment is a broad category, an analysis of Crunchbase funding data for the space shows a high concentration of activity in two key areas: AI-driven hiring software and tools to improve employee engagement.

Below, we look at where the money’s going and how today’s early-stage startups could play a role in transforming the work experience of tomorrow.

Artificial intelligence

To begin, let us reflect that we are at a strange inflection point for AI and employment. Our artificially intelligent overlords are not smart enough to actually do our jobs. Nonetheless, they have strong opinions about whether we’re qualified to do them ourselves.

It is at this peculiar point that the alchemic mix of AI software, recruiting-based business models and venture capital are coming together to build startups.

In 2018, at least 43 companies applying AI or machine learning to some facet of employment have raised seed or early-stage funding, according to Crunchbase data. In the chart below, we look at a few startups that have secured rounds, along with their backers and respective business models:

At present, even AI boosters don’t tout the technology as a cure-all for troubles plaguing the talent recruitment space. While it’s true humans are biased and flawed when it comes to evaluating job candidates, artificially intelligent software suffers from many of the same bugs. For instance, Amazon scrapped its AI recruiting tool developed in-house because it exhibited bias against women.

That said, it’s still early innings. Over the next few years, startups will be actively tweaking their software to improve performance and reduce bias.

Happiness and engagement

Once the goal of recruiting the best people is achieved, the next step is ensuring they stay and thrive.

Usually, a paycheck goes a long way to accomplishing the goal of staying. But in case that’s not enough, startups are busily devising a host of tools for employers to boost engagement and fight the scourge of burnout.

In the chart below, we look at a few of the companies that received early-stage funding this year to build out software platforms and services aimed at making people happier and more effective at work:

The most heavily funded of the early-stage crop looks to be Peakon, which offers a software platform for measuring employee engagement and collecting feedback. The Danish firm has raised $33 million to date to fund its expansion.

London-based BioBeats is another up-and-comer aimed at the “corporate wellness” market, with digital tools to help employees track stress levels and other health-related metrics. The company has raised $7 million to date to help keep those stress levels in check.

Early-stage indicators

Early-stage funding activity tends to be an indicator of areas with somewhat low adoption rates today that are poised to take off dramatically. For employment, that means we can likely expect to see AI-based recruitment and software-driven engagement tools become more widespread in the coming years.

What does that mean for job seekers and paycheck toilers? Expect to spend more of your time interfacing with intelligent software. Apparently, it’ll make you more employable, and happier, too.

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Jan
05

44 enterprise startups to bet your career on in 2019

As the New Year approaches, many of us find this is a natural time for self-reflection on our lives.

If you've come to the conclusion that you're ready for a new job and want to go to a startup that plays in the $3.8 trillion world of enterprise tech — selling wares to other businesses, not to consumers — we've got you covered.

Here's our annual list of promising enterprise startups who did so well in 2018, they are poised for future success in 2019 and beyond.

We looked at a variety of factors when selecting this list including the experience of leaders and founders, the reputations of investors and the amount of funding raised along with valuations, based on data from online finance database Pitchbook, keeper of such records. We also selected startups at a variety of stages from just starting out to well established.

Here are the 44 enterprise tech startups to bet your career on in 2019:

Original author: Julie Bort and Rosalie Chan

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Jan
30

France’s Digital Minister Mounir Mahjoubi on upcoming digital policies

You could say I've been around the diet block. I've been vegan, restricted my eating to an eight-hour window as part of an intermittent fast, and given the ketogenic diet a try — all in an attempt to give myself more energy, feel healthier, and power through the activities I enjoy, like yoga, hiking, and rock climbing.

The one regimen I've never tried, however, is the one I write about most: the Mediterranean diet.

The plan's cornerstones are vegetables, fish, olive oil, beans, nuts, and whole grains. Items like processed foods, red meat, poultry, and dairy get slashed.

Studies suggest that people who eat this way have a reduced risk of diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer, so it's no surprise that dietitians and clinicians say the approach is a great way to fuel the body. An expert panel convened by U.S. News & World Report also called the Mediterranean diet the best overall diet, for the second year in a row.

Leafy greens provide key vitamins and minerals needed for healthy skin, hair, and nails, while whole grains support good digestion, and fish and nuts provide protein to maintain muscle and keep energy levels steady. The Mediterranean diet is also rich in several ingredients that may be critical to a healthy mind, and one recent study found that people with depression who were put on the diet saw a significant reduction in symptoms.

Two types of healthy fat — monounsaturated and omega-3 fatty acids — are staples of the plan, as well as several antioxidants found in berries and dark chocolate. Previous studies have found a link between both of these ingredients and a lower risk of dementia and higher cognitive performance.

Research has also suggested that two other Mediterranean ingredients — leafy greens and berries — could help protect against a phenomenon called neuro degeneration, which often characterizes diseases including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

I'm a sample size of just one person, so it's worth taking my experience of the diet with a grain of salt. That said, I learned a ton on the plan. Here's a glimpse.

Original author: Erin Brodwin

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Nov
20

Here's how Apple's new $1,000 iPhone XS compares to last year's iPhone X (AAPL)

VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Apple just slashed its quarterly revenue guidance amid slowing iPhone sales in China and a variety of other issues.Analysts had recently warned on an impending slowdown in the iPhone market, due in part to slowing economic growth in China.Google Trends data shows interest began waning years ago in both China and in the US.Watch Apple trade live.

Apple, in a rare move on Wednesday, issued a warning on its quarterly revenue guidance amid slowing iPhone sales in China and a litany of other issues. The announcement slammed shares, sending them down more than 8% early Thursday.

"While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China," CEO Tim Cook wrote in a letter to investors. "In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad. 

"Lower than anticipated iPhone revenue, primarily in Greater China, accounts for all of our revenue shortfall to our guidance and for much more than our entire year-over-year revenue decline."

But while analysts have warned of an impending slowdown in the iPhone market and Apple suppliers have been cutting their own guidance for the very same reason, Google Trends shows interest has been waning for years.

An analysis from DataTrek Research shows interest in iPhones — Apple's flagship product that accounts for 63% of its revenue, according to UBS — peaked in the US in September 2012, when the iPhone 5 was released. It topped out in Hong Kong in September 2014, when the iPhone 6 was released.

Declining interest among Google users comes as the iPhone's average selling price has risen and the quality has improved, leading to consumers holding onto their phones for longer periods of time.

"The market for +$700 smartphones is a good one, to be sure," Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, told clients in a report on Thursday. "But technological disruption is all about scale and growth, not just profitability." 

Searches during the most recent iPhone launch — the iPhone XS/XR in September 2018 — were 46% below those in September 2012.

This chart shows how searches for the term "iPhone" have trended within the US over the past 15 years.

Google Trends

The peaks have come toward the end of each year ever since the iPhone debuted, likely due to launches each September.

Now, here's how searches for the term "iPhone" have trended in Hong Kong over the same timeframe. DataTrek Research used Hong Kong as a reliable proxy for "Greater China" results because Google is not available on the mainland. Search volumes for the most recent launch, last September, were 40% lower than the same time in 2014.

Google Trends

Read more: Apple just warned its holiday quarter was a huge miss, and the stock is getting crushed

Analysts responded to the warning by cutting their price targets on Apple shares. Timothy Arcuri, an analyst at UBS, lowered his sales and earnings per share estimates for 2019 and 2020. He also cut his price target from $210 to $180. Still, that target implies a 14% gain from Wednesday's closing price of $157.92. Arcuri maintained his "buy" rating.

"Slower iPhone growth ultimately presents services headwinds, but AAPL still has huge untapped services rev pool (600mn+ active iPhones pay zero) and new bundle appears very likely," he told clients on Thursday.

Read more about Apple's sales and iPhone demand warning:

Markets Insider

Original author: Rebecca Ungarino

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Jan
30

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yanev Suissa of SineWave Ventures (Part 7) - Sramana Mitra

Mark Zuckerberg has sold close to 30 million shares of Facebook to fund an ambitious biomedical-research project, called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, with a goal of curing all disease within a generation.

A less publicized initiative related to the $5 billion program includes work on brain-machine interfaces, devices that essentially translate thoughts into commands. One recent project is a wireless brain implant that can record, stimulate, and disrupt the movement of a monkey in real time.

In a paper published in the highly cited scientific journal Nature on New Year's Eve, researchers detail a wireless brain device implanted in a primate that records, stimulates, and modifies its brain activity in real time, sensing a normal movement and stopping it immediately. One of those researchers is an investigator with the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a nonprofit medical research group related to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Scientists refer to the interference as "therapy" because it is designed to be used to treat diseases like epilepsy or Parkinson's by stopping a seizure or other disruptive motion as it starts.

"Our device is able to monitor the brain while it's providing the therapy, so you know exactly what's happening," Rikky Muller, a coauthor of the new study, told Business Insider. A professor of computer science and engineering at UC Berkeley, Muller is also a CZ Biohub investigator.

The applications of brain-machine interfaces are far-reaching: While some researchers focus on using them to help assist people with spinal-cord injuries or other illnesses that affect movement, others aim to see them transform how everyone interacts with laptops and smartphones. Both a division at Facebook, formerly called Building 8, as well as an Elon Musk-founded company, called Neuralink, have said they are working on the latter.

Muller said her research at the Biohub is walled off from the other work on brain-computer interfaces being done at Facebook.

The company's notoriously secretive Building 8 program underwent a recent reshuffling that included killing off the Building 8 label and shifting its experimental projects to new divisions. Earlier this year, Business Insider exclusively reported that the program's director had helped create an armband that transformed words into understandable vibrations.

Read more: Facebook's secretive hardware group made an armband that lets you 'hear' through your skin, a key part of the company's bigger plan to embed computers in our bodies

A brain device that changes behavior automatically

In Muller's paper, she and a team of researchers from Berkeley and a medical-device startup called Cortera detailed how they used a device they label the "Wand" to stop a monkey from doing a trained behavior. In this case, the behavior involved moving a cursor to a target on a screen using a joystick and holding the target there for a set period of time.

Placed on top of the monkey's head, the wireless, palm-sized Wand device connected directly to its brain and could record, stimulate, and modify its behavior in real time. Nature Biomedical Engineering / Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Placed on top of the monkey's head, the wireless, palm-sized Wand device connected directly to its brain. From there, it was able to record, stimulate, and modify the monkey's behavior in real time.

Read more: You can control this new software with your brain, and it should make Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg nervous

The Wand could "sense" when the primate was about to move the joystick and stop that movement with a targeted electric signal sent to the right part of its brain, Muller said. And since the machine was wireless, the monkey didn't need to be physically confined or attached to anything for it to work.

"This device is game-changing in the sense that you could have a subject that's completely free-moving and it would autonomously, or automatically, know" when and how to disrupt its movement, said Muller.

'We want people to do the thing that's crazy, the thing that other people wouldn't try'

The Wand could one day have applications for a range of ailments that affect movement (also called motor skills), including spinal-cord injuries and epilepsy.

"Right now we can take a specific motor function, sense that it's happening, and disrupt it," said Muller.

That's a big departure from current devices, which typically require multiple pieces of bulky equipment and can only sense movement or disrupt it at one time. Muller's device does both at once. To do so, it uses 128 electrodes, or conductors, placed directly into the primate's brain — roughly 31 times more electrodes than today's human-grade brain-computer devices, which are limited to 4-8 electrodes.

"I believe this device opens up possibilities for new types of treatments," said Muller.

Muller is also the cofounder and chair of the board of Cortera, which has received grant funding from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institutes of Health. Her work on brain-machine interfaces is just one component of a broader set of projects under the CZ Biohub umbrella.

Joe DeRisi, the copresident of the Biohub and a professor of biophysics at UCSF, told Business Insider that the initiative aims to help bolster the research projects being done by local scientists, to build important medical devices that wouldn't otherwise exist, and to "push boundaries."

"We want people to do the thing that's crazy, the thing that other people wouldn't try," DeRisi said.

Original author: Erin Brodwin

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Nov
20

Walmart's Jet.com has leaked its Black Friday deals — they include discounts on Bose headphones and the Fitbit Versa

The English rock band Pink Floyd named a best-selling album after it. There are Disney anthems that sing it. Even news stories (including some of our own) plaster it across headlines: the "dark side of the moon."

However, the phrase is almost always used incorrectly.

When people say the "dark side" of the moon, they're most often referring to what is technically called the "far side" — where China just landed its Chang'e 4 spacecraft for the first time in history. Scientists call the face of the moon that we always see the "near side."

The reason why the far side exists is owed to complex physics called tidal locking, and the origin of how Luna got stuck dates all the way back to the formation of the moon-Earth system.

Today, the net result is that the moon spins counterclockwise on its axis, and the moon also orbits Earth in a counterclockwise fashion, and it does so almost perfectly in sync.

On average, according to Wolfram Alpha (a search engine for nerds), one lunar rotation takes 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes, and 40 seconds. This is exactly the same amount of time it takes the moon to orbit our planet. If the moon did not rotate on its axis, we'd see the full far side about once every 30 days.

That's not to say there is no such thing as the moon's dark side, though you'd have to accept that it's always moving.

Just like the near side of the moon, the far side cycles through day and night (or "dark side") phases due to the changing angle of the sun as the moon orbits Earth.NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

It works out that the average length of a month lasts about 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 2.8 seconds, per Wolfram Alpha. This time span is a couple of days longer than the moon's sidereal day, or time it takes to rotate once, because the moon-Earth system orbits the sun.

This celestial dance and the angle of sunlight makes the average lunar night last for about 14 days, 18 hours, 22 minutes, and 1 second at any given point on the moon.

Put another way: The dark side of the moon is the half not illuminated by the sun, and it's constantly creeping around the world, just as it happens on Earth. Except instead of taking about 24 hours to complete one lap, the dark phase takes about 30 days.

Here's a sped-up view of that process as seen from the moon's far side in an animation created by NASA's Science Visualization Studio:

We see a new moon when the dark side faces Earth, and a full moon when the dark side covers the far side. So if you want to shout "China is on the dark side of the moon!" into the night sky and be absolutely correct, you will have to wait until January 21 at 12:16 a.m. ET— the moment that the next full moon peaks.

The event also happens to be what's called a "super blood wolf moon," so be sure to mark your calendar to see it.

Original author: Dave Mosher

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Nov
20

The latest scandals at Facebook will hurt morale and make it harder to hire during this critical moment, insiders say (FB)

My new year's resolution started early this year.

After switching to Android in November after over a decade of using iOS and iPhones, I was determined to find a better note-taking/organizing/journaling solution than the mishmash of hard-copy notebooks, the iOS Notes app, and Google Docs that I've been using for the past few years.

As Business Insider's international correspondent, I'm constantly traveling around the world while juggling a dozen different tasks, like planning itineraries, taking notes during interviews or experiences, prioritizing my workload, and jotting down some observation about a place on the go.

The combination I was using was making me more disorganized than organized. I had some observations in one app, another in Google Docs, and to-do lists and interview notes in my notebooks. To put it simply, I lost or misplaced a lot of notes, or I would find myself in a desperate scramble to find one note or another when trying to write a story. It was no fun.

My first instinct was to use Evernote, as I'd used it before. But during my last stint with Evernote several years ago, I found the interface too complicated for the quick observations and to-do lists that I am most often writing down. It's probably most useful for intensive tasks like say, writing a book, as Insider Inc.'s Global Editor-in-Chief Nich Carlson once did. Some of the best features are hidden by a premium paywall. I wasn't ready to commit to a for-pay solution.

After reading through my colleague Kaylee Fagan's rundown of popular note-taking apps, I settled on Google Keep Notes. It was the best decision I've made in a long time, for a few reasons:

1. It works the same everywhere.

Google Keep Notes works exactly the same on every platform, from iOS to Android to its web app.

When I switched to Android from iOS, all my iOS notes were suddenly trapped on my old phone and my iCloud account. I was determined to not get stuck like that again.

Google Play Store

Other note-taking apps I've used in the past work only on a smartphone. Having a web version means I can quickly access my story notes or observations when I come back from a day of interviews and am ready to sit down and write up my draft.

2. The interface is simple, lightweight, and visually appealing.

I've found that encourages me to use the app more often. It's literally one click to start a note.

Whereas in the past I found myself whipping out my hard-copy notebook to jot down a note or a list, I now find myself opening up Keep because of how easy and quick it is to use.

Screenshot / Business Insider

The app supports every kind of note you might want to take, including to-do lists, images, text, voice, drawings, maps, and even webpages you want to remember.

Even more amazingly, if you take voice notes — I take a lot for talking out story ideas — Keep Notes converts all voice memos to text so you can read them later.

The simplicity of the app can occasionally be annoying. It's impossible, for instance, to have a note that is both text and a checklist. In addition, the app doesn't support rich text like bold or italics, two features I like to use to visually signal what's important in a note.

Still, it's a small price to pay for how easy and useful the app is overall.

3. The organizational system is best described as controlled chaos — just the way I like it.

Google Play Store

The interface most closely resembles a cork board covered with different-colored notes. It allows you to scroll through and quickly find the note you are looking for without so much as typing a search or cycling through folders.

Some people might find this system to be chaotic, but I've found it to be adaptable to multiple levels of organization. It all depends on how much thought or customization you want to put into the app.

Notes can be color-coded with about a dozen different colors. For now, I've simply added color to the notes I am consistently going back to, but you could easily color-code notes based on projects or type.

Additionally, Keep Notes uses labels rather than folders, like most other note-taking apps, meaning you can sort your notes any which way you want. Simply add a hashtag with the label to the end of your note, and it's already sorted.

When you want to find your note later, you can click into a label or use Google's powerful search to find exactly what you're looking for, by text, label, or note type.

4. The app includes premium features you normally have to pay for in other apps.

Google Play Store

Keep can extract text from photos, like from a sign or a business card — a feature for which Evernote charges extra.

Unsurprisingly, Keep integrates well with Google Drive and Google Docs, the two apps I use most for work. If you want, Keep can transfer notes to a Google Doc, which I've found extremely useful when I'm ready to start writing an article; my notes and observations go directly into my draft.

Keep can even have notes that act as reminders, which can be set to pop up on a specific date and time, or even based on a GPS location.

Perhaps, most importantly, Keep allows you to have collaborative or shared notes. That means that in the same app my partner and I can have a shared to-do list for personal stuff and I can keep my editor updated on which stories I'm working on.

Everything is in one place. And that's what's been keeping (ha!) me using the app long after I abandoned other solutions.

It's a new year, new me after all.

Original author: Harrison Jacobs

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Jan
05

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Nihal Mehta of ENIAC Ventures (Part 4) - Sramana Mitra

Sramana Mitra: Based on what you said, I want to provide some commentary to our audience about the team issue. You hear me talking about multiple co-founders and he’s talking about a full-stack team....

___

Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Jan
05

The 13 most hilarious Amazon movie reviews from 2018

Joe Grabinski has amassed a big following on social media through his Twitter account, Amazon Movie Reviews, over the last few years. The account, where Grabinski collects the most hilariously bad reviews of hit movies from Amazon, currently has 206,000 followers.

Grabinski provided Business Insider his favorite reviews written in 2018. They include bizarre takes on a wide range of movies, from recent horror hit, "A Quiet Place," to Marvel blockbusters "Thor: Ragnarok" and "Spider-Man: Homecoming," to "The Perfect Storm."

Below are 13 of the best Amazon Movie Reviews from 2018:

Original author: Travis Clark

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Jan
05

With China in sharp focus, Morgan Stanley forecasts a rough 2019 for the companies that make the chips in the world's smartphones and servers (MU, WDC, TXN, NXPI, CY, MCHP)

Semiconductor companies could suffer a "sharp contraction" in revenue as a cluster of challenges, from rising inventory levels to trade tensions with China, swamp the industry, Morgan Stanley warned in a noted published on Wednesday.

Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore wrote that he expects to see 5% revenue declines across the semiconductor sector in 2019, despite industry data which showed semiconductor sales on the rebound in November after a weak October.

According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, global chip sales increased roughly 10% year-over-year in November, to $41.4 billion. Semiconductors are used in everything from smartphones to automobiles, with much of the manufacturing taking place in China.

Morgan Stanley raised its overall chip industry revenue growth forecast for 2018 from 13% to 14%, but maintained a low-single-digital growth-forecast for the fourth quarter.

The industry faces growing challenges including excess inventory and weak demand, combined with China trade tensions and slowing M&A, Moore wrote. Chip companies will report Q4 results in the coming weeks, and the signs of trouble could appear in companies' end of year results and their Q1 forecasts.

The biggest companies at risk, Morgan Stanley warned, are memory companies such as Micron Technology and Western Digital; Analog companies such as Texas Instruments and NXP; and MCU companies Cypress Semiconductor Corporation and Microchip Technology.

"We remain cautious on semis," Moore wrote.

That note was published Wednesday, just before Apple made an announcement of its own to lower its revenue guidance for the fourth quarter. This sent the stocks of chip manufactures like Qualcomm and Intel stumbling.

The gist, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, is that a downturn in the Chinese economy and US/China relations have made it extremely tenuous to be a tech company dependent on revenues from China.

Original author: Becky Peterson

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Feb
05

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Victoria Pettibone of Astia Angels (Part 4) - Sramana Mitra

The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.

ClassPass is a relatively inexpensive way to drop into boutique fitness classes in your area without any commitment or membership. You pay a monthly ClassPass fee and get credits, and you use those credits to sign up online for classes that pique your interest: boxing, yoga, cycling, weight training, martial arts, pilates, and a seemingly never-ending list of others.

And, since budget-friendly options can often mean second-rate options, it's nice to know ClassPass typically features top-tier studios, including a majority of the fitness classes you've likely heard of or have actually been meaning to try.

Right now, ClassPass is offering a free month-long trial for the new year.

Their standard offer is typically two weeks. You can take up to six classes during your free month, and you can cancel your membership whenever. If you don't cancel, though, you'll be auto-enrolled in a monthly membership.

Rates depend on your location and how many classes you want to go to per month. ClassPass/Mara Leighton

Here's how ClassPass typically works:

After your free trial, you pay a monthly membership fee that's based on your city and how many classes you want to take each month. For reference, the lowest tier membership starts at $15, though you should expect to pay something closer to $59 (the rate in cities like Minneapolis) to $79 (the rate in New York City) per month for five to eight classes. That works out to be about $7-$12 per class in Minneapolis or $10-$16 in New York. Use the app or online site to book yourself in one of the thousands of participating fitness classes in your area. Every class has a different credit value, and you can book in advance or last-minute—even up to five minutes before it starts when you use the mobile app. Add more credits anytime if you use yours up.

The perks are plentiful. You pay as much as 50% less per month for multiple specialized fitness classes (for comparison, a single class can normally run for $30), you can get class recommendations and read reviews so you know what's good before you try it, and you can stream workouts from home if you're not up to leaving the house. You don't have to buy class packs or commit to a membership that penalizes you if you decide in February that you're really not interested in getting into fitness in 2019.

Plus, the versatility means working out can actually be fun and engaging — and you can rope friends into trying out new classes with you, in the hopes that you'll discover you actually love something like martial arts but just never knew it. And if you're traveling, you can switch your account location and use ClassPass wherever you are (given you're in one of the 80 participating cities).

The risks you run, depending on the city, are popular classes booking up quickly, falling in love with a high-credit class, needing to buy more credits because you exercised too much that month (is this really a bad thing, though?), or paying for a month and never using the credits. If you end the month with a bunch of unused credits, you can use them on the considerably higher credit spa treatments ClassPass also offers. Otherwise, up to 10 credits roll over each month. And if you love a workout spot that isn't listed, submit it as a recommendation to ClassPass.

You can go to most studios an unlimited times per month (or per "cycle"), though it's possible more credits will be charged if you go often, in which case you'll see a message explaining the change.

Overall, ClassPass is ideal for relatively inexpensive access to variety and top fitness classes. But, with a month to try it, you don't have much to lose. If you're thinking about trying it, now is a good time.

Sign up for your free month-long trial of ClassPass here

Original author: Mara Leighton

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Jan
05

Startups Weekly: VCs celebrate the new year the only way they know how

Venture capitalists swore in the new year the only way they know how… by submitting SEC paperwork for new funds! insert party hat/confetti emoji here.

As many of us brainstormed our New Year’s resolutions and let our hangovers wear off, several firms began this week what for some is a long and arduous process of raising a VC fund and for others is as simple as a few phone calls to LPs. What else happened this week? Pokémon GO creator Niantic secured $190 million, Mary Meeker announced the name of her fund and a whole bunch of people played with Popsugar’s somewhat sketchy twinning app.

Fresh funds:

Mary Meeker will raise up to $1.5 billion for Bond, her new VC fund. Union Square Ventures raised $429 million across two new funds. Lightspeed Venture partners announced a $560 million China fund. And biotech firm Atlas Venture brought in $250 million.

AR startups are failing:

TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney takes a look at struggling augmented reality startups and questions some of the larger players, from Magic Leap to Snap and Niantic. And speaking of Niantic, the Pokémon GO developer closed a $190 million funding round this week at a $3.9 billion valuation.

Indian startups start the year off strong:

Startups based in India raised more than $10 billion in 2018, per Venture Beat, a record amount of capital for the country. Already this year one company has closed a round larger than $100 million. CarDekho, an online marketplace for car sales in India, has pulled in a new $110 million Series C funding round this week to push deeper into financial services and insurance.

Future tech:

Boom Supersonic, which is building and designing what it calls the “world’s first economically viable supersonic airliner,” announced a $100 million Series B funding round led by Emerson Capital. Other investors include Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, Caffeinated Capital, SV Angel, Sam Altman, Paul Graham, Ron Conway, Michael Marks and Greg McAdoo.

A startup disrupting the … bottled water business:

FloWater has raised $15 million for its reusable water bottle refilling stations to produce purified water. Bluewater, a Swedish company that sells water purifiers, among other things, led the round.

VC subsidized vending machines:

Vengo makes wall-mounted mini-vending machines the size of large picture frames that it then sells to vending machine distributors, asking for a small fee per month in exchange for access to its software. Now it has $7 million to build out its business.

A VC gets a second chance:

After SpaceX filed more SEC paperwork as part of its $500 million upcoming fundraise, TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos noticed a familiar name on the document: Steve Jurvetson. Jurvetson is a longtime board member of both Tesla and SpaceX, but after he left DFJ, the venture capital firm he co-founded, in 2017 amid questions about his personal conduct, there was uncertainty around whether he would keep those director positions. Well, it looks like Elon Musk is standing by Jurvetson.

And finally, are you smarter than a TechCrunch reporter?

Let this test decide.

 

Want more TechCrunch newsletters? Sign up here.

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Jan
26

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Gina Taylor Cotter, SVP & GM, Global Commercial Financing, American Express (Part 3) - Sramana Mitra

A system that uses a technique called constructive solid geometry (CSG) is allowing MIT researchers to deconstruct objects and turn them into 3D models, thereby allowing them to reverse-engineer complex things.

The system appeared in a paper entitled “InverseCSG: Automatic Conversion of 3D Models to CSG Trees” by Tao Du, Jeevana Priya Inala, Yewen Pu, Andrew Spielberg, Adriana Schulz, Daniela Rus, Armando Solar-Lezama, and Wojciech Matusik.

“At a high level, the problem is reverse engineering a triangle mesh into a simple tree. Ideally, if you want to customize an object, it would be best to have access to the original shapes — what their dimensions are and how they’re combined. But once you combine everything into a triangle mesh, you have nothing but a list of triangles to work with, and that information is lost,” said Tao Du to 3DPrintingIndustry. “Once we recover the metadata, it’s easier for other people to modify designs.”

The process cuts objects into simple solids that can then be added together to create complex objects. Because 3D scanning is imperfect, the creation of mesh models of various objects rarely leads to a perfect copy of the original. Using this technique, individual parts are cut away, analyzed and reassembled, allowing for a more precise scan.

“Further, we demonstrated the robustness of our algorithm by solving examples not describable by our grammar. Finally, since our method returns parameterized CSG programs, it provides a powerful means for end-users to edit and understand the structure of 3D meshes,” said Du.

The system detects primitive shapes and then modifies them. This allows it to recreate almost any object with far better accuracy than in previous versions of the software. It’s a surprisingly cool way to begin hacking hardware in order to understand it’s shape, volume and stability.

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Sep
03

NFTs: Key infrastructure for digital inclusion

One Denver-based startup’s long-shot bid to move today’s commercial jets beyond supersonic speeds just got a big injection of cash.

Boom Supersonic, which is building and designing what it calls the “world’s first economically viable supersonic airliner,” announced today that they’ve closed a $100 million Series B funding round led by Emerson Capital. Other investors include Y Combinator Continuity, Caffeinated Capital, SV Angel, Sam Altman, Paul Graham, Ron Conway, Michael Marks and Greg McAdoo.

The startup has raised around $140 million to date. The team has about 100 employees, and hopes to double that number this year with its new funding.

“Today, the time and cost of long-distance travel prevent us from connecting with far-off people and places,” said Boom CEO Blake Scholl in a statement. “Overture fares will be similar to today’s business class—widening horizons for tens of millions of travelers. Ultimately, our goal is to make high-speed flight affordable to all.”

Alongside the fundraise, Boom is further detailing its plans to begin testing its Mach 2.2 commercial airliner this year. The company is aiming to launch a 1:3 scale prototype of its planned Overture airliner this year, called the XB-1. The two-seater plane will serve to validate the technologies being built for the full-sized jet.

The startup’s supersonic Overture jet will hold 55 passengers, and the team hopes that the costs of flying more than double the speed of sound will be comparable to today’s business-class ticket prices. The company already has pre-orders from Virgin Group and Japan Airlines for 30 airliners.

Indeed, $100 million may seem like a lot of money, but the development costs for lengthy projects like these can quickly race toward the billions of dollars, suggesting that if they carry out their mission, they’re going to need a whole lot more.

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