Month: November 2018

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is calling on the telecom industry to help put an end to scam robocalls. On Monday, FCC chairman Ajit Pai sent letters to the heads of voice providers, including AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Frontier, Google, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon* and others, urging them to adopt a call authentication system that would combat illegal caller ID spoofing and get that system up and running no later than next year.

The FCC stressed the system was critical to protecting Americans from scam robocalls.

Pai also said the FCC would take action if the companies were unable to comply.

“Combatting illegal robocalls is our top consumer priority at the FCC. That’s why we need call authentication to become a reality—it’s the best way to ensure that consumers can answer their phones with confidence. By this time next year, I expect that consumers will begin to see this on their phones,” said Chairman Pai, in a statement.

“Carriers need to continue working together to make this happen and I am calling on those falling behind to catch up. I also thank the many providers that are well on their way toward implementation. Greater participation will ensure the system works for consumers, who expect real progress in combatting malicious spoofing and scam robocalls. If it does not appear that this system is on track to get up and running next
year, then we will take action to make sure that it does,” he said.

The letters focused on those voice providers that had not yet established concrete plans to protect their customers using the “Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs (SHAKEN)” and the
“Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR)” standards.

Under this framework, calls traveling through interconnected phone networks would be “signed” as legitimate by the originating carriers, then validated by other carriers before reaching consumers. This would give consumers the ability to verify the call is actually from the person supposedly making it, the FCC explained.

Today, spam robocalls are becoming such a scourge that people are suspicious now every time the phone rings and it’s not a call from someone in their contacts. Plus, scammers have been spoofing caller IDs to hide their numbers in order to make it seem like calls are local and to make it more difficult to track them down.

The FCC’s letters additionally asked providers questions about their implementation plans, and thanked those in the industry who had committed to implementing a call authentication framework in the near-term. It didn’t specify what sort of action it would take against those who don’t get on board, but the organization has been fining robocallers directly in recent months.

The FCC had begun its work on a call authentication framework in July 2017, when it sought public input. In May 2018, Pai accepted the recommendations of the North American Numbering Council for implementing the SHAKEN/STIR standards, it also noted.

* Disclosure: TechCrunch parent Verizon Media Group/Oath is owned by Verizon. 

Source: Tech Crunch

Vimeo has long regarded itself as the video-sharing site for those that want to get experimental. Well, the company has found a new medium to get creators pumped about, and I think it’s fair to say they’re near the forefront of this one: holograms.

Vimeo has partnered with Brooklyn-based Looking Glass Factory to combine volumetric video with a medium that can display the content without a headset. Looking Glass Factory’s lenticular display is intensely cool, with a particular depth impression of 3D that really offers something interesting. The startup just raked in $844,000 in pre-orders from a Kickstarter campaign; they’ve already released a few products.

The partnership is by way of Vimeo Creator Labs, a group inside the company aiming to approach new technologies and carry out some early experiments. For Vimeo, this work with “holograms” is more a mark of the group’s interest in volumetric video capture. The medium has lived in plenty of VR headsets, but Looking Glass Factory’s device allows multiple viewers to simultaneously experience content, a new twist.

“We focus a lot on trying to make these things accessible and web-first,” said Casey Pugh, Vimeo’s Creator Lab head. “I think the problem with volumetric video right now is that it hasn’t been very accessible.”

The channel is live now, though you’ll need Looking Glass Factory’s hardware before you can really check anything out. The company does have some resources available for creators interested in recording their 3D assets and getting some holograms up onto the world wide web.

Source: Tech Crunch

Photomath just raised a $6 million funding round from Goodwater Capital, with Learn Capital also participating. Photomath has created a hugely successful mobile app for iOS and Android with 100 million downloads so far.

Photomath first launched at TechCrunch Disrupt London back in 2014. The company was working on text recognition technology. Photomath was just a demo app to promote that technology.

But the startup accidentally created a consumer success. The app instantly attracted millions of downloads from many desperate students willing to learn math with their phones.

Years later it is still one of the most downloaded apps in the App Store and Play Store. And the reason it’s been so successful is that it’s a simple concept.

After downloading the app, you just have to point your phone at a math problem. It can be in a book, or it can recognize your own handwriting. The app then gives you a step-by-step explanation to solve the problem.

Combining these two things is what makes Photomath useful. WolframAlpha can solve equations, and Evernote can recognize your handwriting. But nobody thought about combining these things.

Typing an equation can be hard, so it makes a ton of sense to bridge the gap between the physical world and smartphones. Before everybody started talking about augmented reality, Photomath was already taking advantage of the system-on-a-chip in your phone.

Photomath is also capable of generating graphs and supports advanced problems, such as limits, integrations, complex numbers, etc. The app solves around 1.2 billion math problems per month.

Source: Tech Crunch

Luminar, the buzzy LiDAR startup founded by Austin Russell, has added another high-profile executive to its ranks. This time, Luminar has hired Uber executive Brent Schwarz as its head of business development.

Schwarz, who has been at Luminar for about two months now, comes from Uber by way of self-driving truck startup Otto, which acquired his own LiDAR startup.

Schwarz is a veteran in the LiDAR sensor industry. He was vice president of sales and marketing at Velodyne from 2009 to 2012 and helped turn it into a startup that was hand-building LiDAR units into a commercial enterprise. Velodyne has become a major supplier of LiDAR sensors to companies testing autonomous vehicles. Before Velodyne, Schwarz worked at Intel and Magellan Navigation.

Schwarz would later launch his own company, Tyto LiDAR, which was purchased by self-driving truck company Otto. Uber acquired Otto in 2016. Schwarz stayed on with Uber after the acquisition, and most recently led the effort to build Uber Freight’s financial systems.

“This is a rocket ship I had to be a part of,” Schwarz explaining his reasons for joining Luminar.

LiDAR, or light detection and ranging radar, measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world around the car. LiDAR is considered by many automakers and tech companies an essential piece of technology to safely roll out self-driving cars.

Luminar aims to take LiDAR to the next level, in both technical capabilities and scale. After years of operating in stealth, Luminar made its public debut in the autonomous vehicle startup scene in April 2017.

Luminar built its LiDAR from scratch, a lengthy process that resulted in a simpler design and better performance. It made a leap forward in April 2018 with the introduction of a new LiDAR unit that performs better, is cheaper and is able to be assembled in minutes rather than hours. Luminar’s acquisition of Black Forest Engineering was a big part of its plan to improve the quality along with efficiency. So was the addition of its 136,000-square-foot manufacturing center in Orlando, Florida.

“This is the fundamental shift, when we went from having optics PhDs hand assemble these systems to having proper production to where we can actually scale up and take on new customers beyond the four we’ve been working with the past year,” Russell told TechCrunch, referring to partners that use Luminar sensors in their AV test and development fleets.

The company has disclosed Volvo and Toyota Research Institute as customers. Volvo invested in Luminar earlier this year and became a commercial customer of its new perception development platform.

“We’ve had some massive progress on the business development front, both with bringing Brent on board and scaling up a number of customers,” Russell told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “We’re now able to really address the immediate needs of these various autonomous test and development programs that are now starting translate into volume production, real-world systems for consumers.”

In the past four months, Luminar has quadrupled the number test and development customers. The company now has contracts with 16 OEMs (a combination of automaker, trucking, tech and ride-sharing type companies) and is in negotiations with another 16 or so, Russell said.

Bringing in testing and development customers is a good first step. But locking them in as commercial customers, meaning they’re integrating the sensor into volume production products, is the ultimate target. Schwarz will be a big part of that effort.

Right now, Schwarz says he is focused on hiring to create the teams that will manage the pipeline of new customers as well as help bring those using Luminar sensors for testing and development into series production.

In June, the company hired Fitbit executive Bill Zerella as its chief financial officer and Tami Rosen as chief people officer. Rosen was at Goldman Sachs for 16 years, a senior director of human resources at Apple and most recently vice president of people at Quora.

Earlier this year, Luminar released a new “perception development platform” for which Volvo is the first customer. Luminar’s perception development platform detects and labels what its LiDAR hardware sees and then delivers that data to the car’s self-driving system. The platform is not making decisions. It’s just meant to provide more robust data to help the car’s “brain” make the right ones.

Source: Tech Crunch

The Supreme Court today offered moral support for net neutrality activists and a soft setback for the current FCC’s agenda by declining to revisit a major case supportive of the 2015 rules. It essentially sets in stone the fundamental legality of those rules — not good PR for the agency that just rolled them back with questionable justification.

In a list of orders circulated today (PDF), the Court briefly noted the denial of a writ of certiorari, the official procedure by which a higher court requests the records of a lower court and after further argument passes its own judgment. Four Justices are required to vote yea in order for the case to be accepted — and that wasn’t the case here.

Why even try to have the Supreme Court hear a case that was decided long ago, about a rule that’s no longer in effect, rendering the decision moot? Because legal support for a strong net neutrality rule is kryptonite to the broadband industry.

Broadband and cable providers want to erase any evidence that the 2015 rules were ever acceptable at all. A coalition of these industries filed the petition to have the case reheard based on the idea that since the FCC had changed its mind on things, any decision resting on its previous determinations should be revisited — and, they hoped, eliminated.

Three Justices — Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch — voted in favor of the petition, at least in that the D.C. court’s decision should be vacated and the cases mooted. That would essentially have meant removing the original net neutrality rule’s most high-profile legal buttressing, since that decision strongly supported the legality of the rule. It wouldn’t change anything on its own, but today’s FCC would sure like to be able to say that the rule they repealed was not supported by the courts. Unfortunately, it was, and it will remain so.

Newly minted Justice Kavanaugh did not participate in the process, likely because he had no opportunity to. But funnily enough, he already heard this case — on the D.C. circuit, where he issued a truly embarrassing decision that was soundly rebutted by Judge Srinivasan.

Today’s rejection by the Supreme Court solidifies the decision made by the D.C. judges and denies the FCC a tool in its ongoing campaign to discredit the 2015 rules. Commissioner Rosenworcel, however, who helped create and pass those rules, applauded the decision.

Source: Tech Crunch

After raising $600 million at a $7.6 billion valuation a few weeks ago, Instacart is doubling down on expanding its talent pool to square up against Amazon and others with ambitions in online grocery ordering and delivery.

The company has appointed Varouj Chitilian as it first VP of engineering and Dave Sobota as its first VP of corporate development — both of whom were poached from Google. On top of this, on Friday Instacart also quietly announced that it was making an acquihire, picking up the entire team behind the mobile app analytics startup MightySignal to join their engineering group.

Chitilian started last week after 12 years at Google and had been a director of engineering working most recently on consumer payments services like Google Pay, and on advertising services before that.

Sobota is also a longtime Google veteran, and he’ll be joining Instacart on November 12 after 13 years with the search giant. At Google, he also held a corporate development role and has a background as an M&A lawyer.

In both cases, the hires underscore how Instacart continues to ramp up its executive team both to continue expanding its footprint in North America — Instacart says that its service now works with 15,000 stores and 70,000 ‘shoppers’ in 4,000 cities and is accessible by 70 percent of US customers — as well as to build more services to serve areas where it is already active.

They also come in the wake of Instacart hiring GoFundMe and LinkedIn vet David Hahn as its Chief Product Officer in May; PR supremo Dani Dudek as chief communications officer in July; and Mark Schaaf, another Google vet, as CTO in September. (Chitilian will be reporting to Schaaf, while Sobota will report to COO Ravi Gupta.)

Instacart has positioned itself as a non-competitive partner to grocery stores in the US that want to provide an online shopping and delivery experience to customers, but might lack the infrastructure and technical firepower to build something like that in-house.

Both Instacart and these grocery chains have a common rival, Amazon, which is not only natively a digital commerce company, with all the logistics firepower that comes with that, but it has specifically made huge leaps in its own food delivery ambitions, first when it launched its own Prime-friendly Pantry and Fresh lines, and second when it acquired and expanded Whole Foods. (That’s before you consider what it’s doing in physical stores and its restaurant and meal-kit delivery businesses.)

So even with partners in the grocery world — Instacart has secured partnerships with branches of Walmart in the US and Canada, Kroger, ADLI, Sam’s Club, Albertsons and more — Instacart is still locked in a race on the other side of its marketplace as it works to convince consumers to opt for online purchasing and deliveries, and then to use Instacart and its partners instead of Amazon.

In that regard, the tech and products that Instacart builds — and the partnerships it strikes with partners and potential acquisitions — will be crucial to getting this right, and building a substantial business that will be valuable in the long run.

That’s where the MightySignal team acquihire also comes in. Instacart is not saying much about what the six will be working on at the company, except to note that they will be a part of the Growth team and will “build customer engagement-focused product features that delight new and existing Instacart customers across the U.S. and Canada.”

Shane Wey, the co-founder and CEO of MightySignal who is now a director of engineering at Instacart, declined to say what will happen to the MightySignal product.

 

Source: Tech Crunch

Voting in the U.S. can be confusing. By design, every state is different. On top of that, disinformation meant to discourage voting is rampant this election. Cut through the noise, arm yourself with the facts and vote. We’ve got resources to help you.

1. Fill out a sample ballot for your state

If you’re not voting absentee or by mail, it’s helpful to have an idea of everything that’s on the ballot before you head into vote in person. Before you head to the polls, you can fill out a sample ballot through When We All Vote or an even more comprehensive one on Ballotpedia representing your state and local races online. Best yet, you can print, email or screenshot that and take it in with you to have a reference for your IRL voting experience so that you don’t get overwhelmed.

2. Know your rights

With rampant disinformation actively discouraging some people from going to the polls, it’s vital that you know your rights on Tuesday. Nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org offers a guide to common problems encountered at polling places. Run into trouble? Call the Election Protection Hotline at 866-687-8683 for help. Whatever you do, don’t get discouraged — there are volunteers and organizations that can help sort things out.

Look over Vote.org’s list of common election day problems so you know what to do in case something goes awry.

If you aren’t yet registered to vote but decide that you’d like to (do it!), 18 states and the District of Columbia offer same-day registration that allows you to register and vote at the same time. Be prepared to provide an official ID and prove your residency with a utility bill, though be sure to look up the specific requirements of your state before you show up.

3. Find Your Polling Place

Figuring out where to vote and getting there is half the battle. Vote.org provides a useful polling place locator so you can look up the nearest place to cast your vote. This is important. “Polling locations are assigned by residential address,” USA.gov explains. “You should go to your assigned location since your name will not be on the roster at any other location. Your polling place may change from one election to the next, so check before you go to vote.”

If you try to vote at a polling place that isn’t the one you are assigned, you might have to fill out a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots are for “a voter whose eligibility to vote cannot be proven at the polls on Election Day” and Ballotpedia has a full guide to state by state practices for counting votes by provisional ballot. Be sure to check your state’s guidelines and proceed with caution — some states will not count a provisional ballot cast in the wrong precinct. The ACLU also provides a polling place guide as well as other state-specific resources worth a look.

4. Get to the polls

If you know where you need to be but are worried about getting there, a few tech transportation companies are running election day promos. The bike sharing company Motivate will offer free rides for anyone in the Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Jersey City, New York City, Portland, Minneapolis and Washington D.C.

If you need a ride to the polls, Uber users in the U.S. can cash in on a $10 ride credit using the code “VOTE2018”. For election day, Lyft partnered with Buzzfeed to provide 50% off of rides using a special zip code-specific promo code and will also provide free rides to people in some underserved communities in partnership with some nonprofit partners including Voto Latino, Urban League affiliates, the National Federation of the Blind, Faith in Action, League of Women Voters, and the Student Vets of America. To check on those rides, check out or get in touch with the relevant organization.

Quick links:

Tl; dr? Here’s what you need:

Fill out and email or print a sample ballot

Find your poll location

Know your rights before you vote

And again, if you have any issues at the polls you can call Contact the Election Protection Hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE and the Department of Justice Voting Rights Hotline (800-253-3931).

Source: Tech Crunch