Month: December 2019

Ever since the run up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election (and, arguably, well before that), political ads have become a major sticking point on social media sites looking to crack down on misinformation. Facebook has grappled with the issue to the satisfaction of virtually no one, while Twitter has shut them down altogether.

Ad Age noted this week that Spotify is going to follow in the footsteps of the latter — for the time being. The world’s premier music streaming service is pumping the breaks on political amid the 2020 presidential rate.

The company confirmed the (in)decision in a statement provided to TechCrunch.

Beginning in early 2020, Spotify will pause the selling of political advertising. This will include political advertising content in our ad-supported tier and in Spotify original and exclusive podcasts. At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content. We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities.

There’s certainly something to be said for knowing one’s limitations. And since so much of the company’s revenue arrives from ads run on its free offering, Spotify should be commended for opting to pull the plug on a solid revenue stream, as the campaign is entering the primary season. Spotify wouldn’t comment on how much money is being left on the table, but as Ad Age notes, political organizations ranging from the Bernie Sanders campaign to the RNC use to platform to get the word out. 

Source: Tech Crunch

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Remembering the startups we lost in 2019

This year’s batch doesn’t include any story quite as spectacular as last year’s big Theranos flameout, which gave us a best-selling book, documentary, podcast series and upcoming Adam McKay/Jennifer Lawrence film. Some, like MoviePass, however, may have come close.

And for every Theranos, there are dozens of stories of hardworking founders with promising products that simply couldn’t make it to the finish line.

2. Huawei reportedly got by with a lot of help from the Chinese government

For those following Huawei’s substantial rise over the past several years, it’ll come as no surprise that the Chinese government played an important role in fostering the hardware maker. Even so, the actual numbers behind the ascent are still a bit jaw-dropping — at least according to a piece published by The Wall Street Journal.

3. Russia starts testing its own internal internet

Russia has begun testing a national internet system that would function as an alternative to the broader web, according to local news reports. Exactly what stage the country has reached is unclear, however.

4. Fintech’s next decade will look radically different

Nik Milanovic argues that in the next 10 years, fintech will become portable and ubiquitous, as it both moves into the background and creates a centralized place where our money is managed for us.

5. Wikimedia Foundation expresses deep concerns about India’s proposed intermediary liability rules

Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group that operates Wikipedia, is urging the Indian government to rethink proposed changes to the nation’s intermediary liability rules. Under the proposal, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and IT requires “intermediary” apps — a category that includes any service with more than 5 million users — to set up a local office and have a senior executive in the nation who can be held responsible for any legal issues.

6. The FAA proposes remote ID technology for drones

According to the FAA, the “next exciting step in safe drone integration” aims to offer a kind of license plate analog to identify the approximately 1.5 million drones currently registered with the governmental body.

7. The year of the gig worker uprising

2019 was a momentous year for gig workers. While the likes of Uber, Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash rely on these workers for their respective core services, the pay does not match how much those workers are worth — which is a lot. It’s this issue that lies at the root of gig workers’ demands. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

Source: Tech Crunch

These days it’s easy to bemoan the state of innovation and the dynamism coming from America’s cradle of technological development in Silicon Valley.

The same companies that were praised for reimagining how people organized and accessed knowledge, interacted publicly, shopped for goods and services, conducted business, and even the devices on which all of these things are done, now find themselves criticized for the ways in which they’ve abused the tools they’ve created to become some of the most profitable and wealthiest ventures in human history.

Before the decade was even half over, the concern over the poverty of purpose inherent in Silicon Valley’s inventions were given voice by Peter Thiel — a man who has made billions financing the creation of the technologies whose paucity he then bemoaned.

“We are no longer living in a technologically accelerating world,” Thiel told an audience at Yale University in 2013. “There is an incredible sense of deceleration.”

In the six years since Thiel spoke to that audience, the only acceleration has been the pace of technology’s contribution to the world’s decline.

However, there are some investors who think that the next wave of big technological breakthroughs are just around the corner — and that 2020 will be the year that they enter the public consciousness in a real way.

These are the venture capitalists who invest in companies that develop so-called “frontier technologies” (or “deep tech”) — things like computational biology, artificial intelligence or machine learning, robotics, the space industry, advanced manufacturing using 3D printing, and quantum computing.

Continued advancements in computational power, data management, imaging and sensing technologies, and materials science are bridging researchers’ ability to observe and understand phenomena with the potential to manipulate them in commercially viable ways.

As a result increasing numbers of technology investors are seeing less risk and more rewards in the formerly arcane areas of investing in innovations.

“Established funds will spin up deep tech teams and more funds will be founded to address this market, especially where deep tech meets sustainability,” according to Fifty Years investor, Seth Bannon. “This shift will be driven from the bottom up (it’s where the best founder talent is heading) and also from the top down (as more and more institutional LPs want to allocate capital to this space).”

In some ways, these investments are going to be driven by political necessity as much as technological advancement, according to Matt Ocko, a managing partner at the venture firm DCVC.

Earlier this year, DCVC closed on $725 million for two investment funds focused on deep technology investing. For Ocko, the geopolitical reality of continuing tensions with China will drive adoption of new technologies that will remake the American industrial economy.

“Whether we like it or not, US-government-driven scrutiny of China-based technology will continue in 2020. Less of it will be allowed to be deployed in the US, especially in areas of security, networking, autonomous transportation and space intelligence,” writes Ocko, in an email. “At the same time, US DoD efforts to streamline procurement processes will result in increasingly tighter partnerships between the DoD and tech sector. The need to bring complex manufacturing, comms, and semiconductor technology home to the US will support a renaissance in distributed manufacturing/advanced manufacturing tech and a strong wave of semiconductor and robotic innovation.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Each year the TechCrunch staff gathers together to make a big ol’ list of our Favorite Things from that year.

As always, we’re keeping the definition of “thing” very… open. Maybe it’s a physical thing. Maybe it’s a thing you listen to, or watch. Maybe it’s a thought, or a genre, or a mode. We didn’t worry too much about it. It’s a list of things that, in a sea of things, stood out to us at the end of the year.

This is our list for 2019.

Greg Kumparak, Editor

Parasite

THIS MOVIE. Oh wow. It’s hard to write much without spoiling anything — and really, you want to go in knowing as little as possible, so skip the trailer if you can. Director Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Snowpiercer) is really flexing here, showing his mastery of cinema by sneakily shapeshifting this film from genre to genre as the plot unfolds. Be aware that it gets pretty brutal at times — it’s hard to pin any one genre on this one, but a “Family” movie it is not.

The Office Ladies Podcast

The Office is on a near constant loop in my house, and I thought I knew just about everything there is to know about this show. Then Office co-stars Jenna Fischer (Pam!) and Angela Kinsey (Angela!) decided to re-watch the whole thing a decade later and chat about one episode each week, and it’s just an endless fountain of insight.

While there are a few fun surprise appearances from other Office stars in some episodes, the real gems come out when they hop on the phone with the production crew. I could listen to the show’s prop master Phil Shea talk about the work that goes into even the most seemingly simple of props — like, say, a big cardboard box for Dwight to hide in — all day.

The Mandalorian

I was excited for The Mandalorian, but wary. Would Star Wars work as a live action TV series? Turns out: absolutely, positively, yes.

This is the most “Star Wars-y” a new Star Wars thing has felt to me in decades. Give Jon Favreau more Star Wars, please. I don’t even mind that they’re releasing it weekly instead of letting me binge the whole season at once! To be honest, I … sort of prefer it..

Anthony Ha, Writer

The Criterion Channel

It can be hard to believe that The Criterion Channel exists.

While giant media companies are throwing billions of dollars into acquiring recent hits and creating seemingly endless slates of new shows and movies, The Criterion Channel feels humbler and worthier, a $9.99 per month streaming service designed to keep some of cinema’s greatest achievements in view. In some ways, my Criterion membership can feel like a gentle rebuke to all the bad habits I’ve developed on Netflix — how can I justify spending hours on a dumb reality show when I could be making my way through a great director’s filmography? And if all this sounds forbiddingly arty, I will also note that the service includes fun, smart programming — things like double features and interviews with current filmmakers — designed to make the movies more accessible.

The Void

When a friend and I walked into The Void’s Malaysia location back in January, I was pretty skeptical of anything involving VR. Sure, I’d had some interesting and/or promising experiences, but nothing that really made me feel like I understood why some people are so convinced that VR is the future. Then, after signing up for “Secrets of the Empire,” I walked out a believer.

Thanks to The Void’s combination of VR and physical environments, I came closer than I ever have to feeling like I was really in the world of Star Wars, infiltrating an Empire base and trying to dodge stormtrooper laser blasts. Naturally, when I heard that The Void had opened a pop-up in New York and was selling tickets to its newest title (“Avengers: Damage Control”), I had to try again. Some of the novelty had worn off, but the experience was still a delight — once again, The Void succeeded in transporting me to another world.

Bryce Durbin, Illustrator

Steven Universe

This Cartoon Network series premiered in 2013, but it wasn’t until this past summer that my kids and I devoured the entire five seasons, then waited patiently till “Steven Universe: The Movie” arrived in the fall.

The series, about a family of aliens with super abilities known as the Crystal Gems (including the titular character, who is half-human) has a delightful mix of humor, action, pathos and downright weirdness while exploring ideas of identity, moral obligations and familial bonds. And any cartoon whose recurring cast includes Tom Scharpling, Charlyne Yi and Joel Hodgson has to be good, right? A separate “epilogue series,” Steven Universe Future, began earlier this month.

Nintendo Labo VR

I reviewed Nintendo’s foray into VR back in April. It’s a fun, affordable introduction to VR gaming, and part of the fun is building the novel cardboard toys that house the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers. The games are whimsical and accessible in the classic Nintendo style. To be honest, I’ve hardly played in the second half of the year, but it was such a memorable experience that I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Untitled Goose Game

You play a goose whose only purpose is to cause grief for the people in a small town for your own amusement. Nuff said.

Brian Heater, Hardware Editor

Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising

Rich, lush and haunting, Natalie Mering’s fourth album under the Weyes Blood moniker has one foot firmly planted in the winding drives of ’70s Laurel Canyon and another unstuck in time. Titanic Rising’s biggest shortcoming is its too brief 40-minute runtime. But that brevity only serves to underscore how much the Southern Californian musician has managed to pack into each of its 10 tracks.

AirPods Pro

I’m in the habit of caveat gadget recommendations. Every so often, however, devices come along that I feel fully comfortable recommending to just about anyone who asks — even those who already own the original AirPods.

Apple’s first generation cracked the code for fully wireless earbuds. The second gen improved the experience ever so slightly, but these pricey additions to the family perfect it. The AirPods Pro haven’t left my side since I first picked them up.

Succession

The perfect TV series for the moment. The Roys are the Murdochs and the Trumps and the Kochs and the Redstones and the Kushners. They’re the ruthless billionaires and the corporate-owned media and the armies of failed sons we’ve inherited amidst the gasps of late capitalism. The family of billionaires flashes the occasional glimmer of likability, but it’s far more the exception than the rule amidst Machiavellian overtones and bumbling decision making, all of which might otherwise be completely insufferable were it not so consistently funny. If the fact that the world was gifted Kendall Roy’s “L to the O.G.” a week after The Righteous Gemstone’s “running ’round the house with a pickle in my mouth” doesn’t convince you we’re living in television’s golden age, I don’t know what to tell you.

On Cinema At the Cinema

This is long-form comedy at its finest.

Spread out over a podcast, an 11-season (so far) Adult Swim series, a four-part mock trial and this year’s feature film Mister America, there’s a strong case to be made that the rich, deep lore of the On Cinema universe is the defining comedic statement of our time.

Natasha Lomas, Writer

Twelve South Curve MacBook Stand

The MacBook Pro’s broken keyboard has had one positive impact this year — forcing me to switch to a (reliable) external keyboard that also convinced me it was long overdue to fix my working screen height by using a laptop stand. But which stand to buy? I wanted something simple that, er, “just works” (to coin a phrase).

Turns out there’s an awful lot of over-engineered product trying to convince you to shell out for fancy, adjustable metal. So I was pretty happy when I came across Twelve South’s Curve elegant single-piece design. It’s a shaped metal bar topped with a little padded rubber to coddle the laptop. Gravity does the rest.  The height of the stand isn’t adjustable, but I figured I could always stick it on some books if I needed to (I haven’t). The relative lack of metal in the design is a major plus; less being more from a sustainability point of view. But it’s also just good design, as it allows for free airflow around the laptop. This means it’s helpful in summer for keeping the machine cool. Lastly you get a neat concealed space on your desk, under the laptop, where you can cram some unsightly junk. Win-win all round.

The Irishman

De-aging technology lets Martin Scorsese be a time-thief with “The Irishman,” serving us another choice cut of De Niro, a fillet of Pacino and a full side of Joe Pesci — lured back from unofficial retirement to preside over the 209-minute mobster epic as head of a Philadelphia crime family with his faithful hit man in tow.

I saw the film in the cinema where the de-aging technology was undoubtedly helped by a little fuzzy projection. Suspension of disbelief was quick and easy in such velvet surroundings, even as the film itself ran on and on. If you’re watching on Netflix — the film’s distributor — you’ll inevitably get something a little more uncanny valley; a small(er) screen, detail-filled, more compact and color-saturated view (depending on your TV) lends more of a sickly, otherworldly look to the de-aged faces, at least from clips I’ve seen. But even on the big screen there were moments of disconnect when your brain realizes the younger faces don’t exactly match with how stiffly the bodies of older men move.

Yet it’s petty detail in a masterful tale that sweeps along at Scorsese’s choice of pace, now lingering like a Renaissance painting, now smashing bullet-like through your brain. The best of it were the scenes played for pure absurdity when you wonder whether the genius is really the juxtaposition of such iconic veterans, mellowed and rounded by a lifetime’s experience of telling stories, playing at being young mobsters again but with the lived excess, in brains, bones and bellies, to send up and show up characters wearing digital masks of their younger selves.

Roborock S6

There is domestic life before and after (a good) robot vacuum cleaner. After about half a year with the Roborock S6, it would be hard to give it up now. It’s not that the device can do all the cleaning — and you’ll find yourself tidying stuff out of its way, so it does actually create new tasks — but since it can do the floors so well it feels like it buys you the time to sort out the rest of your household mess. Also, if you have pets, there’s added entertainment in watching them try to ambush it.

Zack Whittaker, Security Editor

Peace and quiet/do not disturb mode

Peace and quiet. In this day and age it’s a rare commodity.

Your phone is constantly buzzing. Social media, that person you hate is getting married. News alert, Trump did a thing. Play this game, check-in for your flight. Buzz, buzz. It’s a never-ending stream of anxiety-inducing notifications. But there is solace knowing you can switch it all off. “Do not disturb” mode will silence your phone more than the mute switch ever could.

It’s bliss — it’s the peace and quiet you crave. But wait — what if I miss something? The fear of missing out is almost worse than the constant stream of goings-on. Do not fear. “Do not disturb” keeps you tethered to your phone — your lifeline in the modern age — without having to be bombarded by the outside world. Enjoy the calm, take a moment, breathe, relax and once you’re ready to see the world again, you can switch it off and go back to the world.

Jake Bright, Writer

Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire

Harley released its 105-horsepower, all-electric, digitally controlled LiveWire in 2019. With this, America’s oldest motorcycle company became the first big gas manufacturer to sell a production e-moto in the U.S. This put Harley on a competitive footing with EV startups (such as Zero) and pre-empted its competitors to create digital, electric and emissions-free motorcycles in the near future.

Devin Coldewey, Writer

Grovemade Task Knife

I used to reach for some scissors or my trusty switchblade or really anything sharp when I needed to open a package, snip off a label and so on, but Grovemade has replaced them all with this beautiful, elegant little object. It’s “just enough knife” as they say, a solid slab of metal with a satisfying heft and grip that looks lovely just sitting around.

Several waxed canvas bags

I got to review several excellent waxed canvas bags for Bag Week 2019, and man, some of these things feel like they’re going to outlive me.

Death Stranding

This game is very good in some ways, and quite bad in other ways, but most importantly it’s totally unique and an attempt to create truly strange and serious Art in the genre of games. Whether it’s successful is a matter of some debate, but there’s simply nothing else like it out there.

Catherine Shu, Writer

OtterBox PopSocket Case

PopSockets are great, but I have trouble getting anything to stay on my iPhone because I live in a humid climate (and also because I tend to use my phone as a fidget spinner). The OtterBox PopSocket case is basically indestructible, so I can continue being really mean to my phone.

Two Dots

This is the only game I have on my phone. I play it because it is visually soothing and the developers constantly release cool new game mechanics. I also enjoy the noises the dots make when you connect them. It’s like popping bubble wrap, but more environmentally friendly.

“Heads Gonna Roll” by Jenny Lewis

I’m not very good at writing about music. It’s hard for me to capture exactly why this track means so much to me. But I’ve listened to it on repeat almost every day over the past year, and each time still feels like the first time I heard it.

Derry Girls

The dark and (very) goofy humor of “Derry Girls” is interspersed with just the right amount of tenderness. The show is about teenagers growing up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, trying to be ordinary teens during an extraordinary and devastating time. I enjoy the Irish slang (keep the subtitles on) and ridiculous dog pee jokes, but the reason I’ve watched both seasons twice is because these kids are trying to navigate crushes, strict teachers and school-bus feuds in the middle of turmoil they didn’t create and perhaps don’t even fully understand yet — something that still resonates, perhaps now more than ever.

Jon Shieber, Editor

The Watchmen

It was original while staying true to the source material. Like all good myths, it put a mirror up to current society to show how cracked it is. It exposed the events of one of the nation’s most horrifying acts of racial violence in the twentieth century and grounded the entire enterprise of superhero mythmaking in its aftermath. It was a merger of pop culture and high art that had “revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger” that Martin Scorsese says he finds lacking in comic book films.

The New Yorker

Staring at a computer screen for hours at a time reading and writing for work doesn’t give me a lot of downtime in the reading department (especially in the golden age of television). But reading a hard copy of The New Yorker every week (er… almost every week) is a welcome escape from the digital world. It’s still the single-best weekly collection of long-form non-fiction, short fiction and poetry written in English.

David Hammons exhibit at Hauser & Wirth

Going to art galleries is another chance to reset from the work grind. Of all of the ones I saw this year, the David Hammons show at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles was the most memorable. Hammons’ installations and individual pieces are beautiful and thought-provoking. And some of the work (like filling the courtyard space of the gallery with tents to call attention to the homeless population living just a few blocks away from its manicured garden and bustling restaurant) was a welcome and powerful reminder of the income inequalities that confront the city and the country.

“Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X

That song was an earworm. It also was the first hit to encapsulate and highlight the power of all the digital tools creators have at their disposal to make and distribute music. Also… that Nine Inch Nails sample is ridiculous.

Steve O’Hear, Writer

Eurorack modular synthesisers

Nearly 20 years late to the party, 2019 was the year that I really discovered modular synthesisers based on the “Eurorack” standard started by Dieter Döpfer in 1995. Over the last 12 months I’ve assembled a modular synthesiser of my own, purchasing modules from mainly boutique manufactures and one-person shops that mostly sell via independent e-commerce stores and online marketplaces like Reverb and Etsy.

The hardware itself is a thriving example of the maker community, which would find it hard to exist without the internet, and I absolutely love unwinding after work making weird and wonderful sounds (and sometimes music) with my Eurorack synth. The year even ended with a Eurorack module being released with my name on it, quite literally).

MyVolts Ripcord

Sometimes companies just “get it,” and Dublin-based MyVolts is one such example. The company sells power adapters — or wall-warts — for just about anything, and has a searchable product database to match the correct gear to the correct power supply.

More recently, MyVolts has ventured into original products of its own, including the Ripcord, which cleverly lets you power a range of devices via USB, such as guitar pedals, drum machines and synths. Use a USB powerbrick at the other end and your music gear becomes portable. The small company even sells a special tip for the Ripcord that lets me power my original 1970s Stylophone via USB instead of its intended 9V PP3 internal battery.

Romain Dillet, Writer

UniFi Dream Machine

How much internet is too much internet? If your answer is that you can never have enough internet, the UniFi Dream Machine is a little box that can get you to the next level. It combines a router, a switch and a rock-solid Wi-Fi access point. But the best part is that everything is configurable, making it both wonderful and scary — if optimizing a local network for maximum performance and optimal security sounds like a great weekend project.

Raspberry Pi 4

The Raspberry Pi started as a simple pocket-sized computer for tinkerers. But that thing has grown up tremendously over the years. The fourth iteration is a powerful, energy-efficient ARM-based computer that can easily replace a home server. You can use it as a file server, as an always-on backup server, as a DNS-based ad-blocker or as a media entertainment machine. You can run a VPN on it, host a web service or turn it into a video game emulation console. Even more than what you can do with it, I just love interacting with it using SSH, spinning up a Docker container and learning how computers work.

My local café/bistro/bar

There’s something wonderful about going to my local café/bistro/bar/you-name-it down the street. Sure, I can meet up with startup founders, grab some lunch, work a bit, read a book and drink until very late with my friends. But what makes it wonderful is that you get to see other people going through happy and sad times, you get to invite complete strangers to join your table for a board game and you get to joke with the staff who very progressively become familiar faces. This is a living place where you can find something that rarely happens on the internet anymore — human coincidences.

Darrel Etherington, Writer

Weiss 38mm Standard Issue Field Watch

This hand-wound watch was a gift to myself this year, and it provided welcome relief from years of wearing an Apple Watch full time. I still keep the Apple Watch for workout tracking, but the Weiss is on my wrist most of the time and manually winding it to top off the power reserve periodically throughout the day is intensely satisfying, and an opportunity to steal a few quiet seconds.

Sony A7RIV

Sony’s A7RIV came out this year, and I pre-ordered it on a hunch it would deliver. And deliver it has — I’m a long-time Canon shooter, but after using the Sony A7RIV for a few months personally and professionally, I’ve sold all my old gear to finance an investment in top-notch Sony lenses that really show off the A7RIV’s amazing resolution power.

Samsung’s The Frame TV

Samsung’s The Frame QLED TV doesn’t have its best panel, nor is it really the best value for money, but its wall-mount (which comes in the box) is super easy to install, and allows the TV to mount truly flush with the wall. I basically use mine as a large, expensive digital frame, but the 4K resolution and QLED color is ideal for showing off photos snapped with the camera I also included in this list.

“On The Line” by Jenny Lewis

I’m stealing from my colleague Catherine Shu a bit here as she already shouted out “Heads Gonna Roll” from this album — but the album is my favorite of the year, and already a cherished classic for me. Jenny Lewis has a discography that’s hard to find fault with, including her Rilo Kiley days, but this one really stands out.

Source: Tech Crunch

Digital books may have a few advantages over ordinary ones when it comes to kids remembering their contents, according to a new study. Animations, especially ones keyed to verbal interactions, can significantly improve recall of story details — but they have to be done right.

The research, from psychologist Erik Thiessen at Carnegie Mellon University, evaluated the recall of 30 kids aged 3-5 after being read either an ordinary story book or one with animations for each page.

When asked afterwards about what they remembered, the kids who had seen the animated book tended to remember 15-20% more. The best results were seen when the book was animated in response to the child saying or asking something about it (though this had to be done manually by the reading adult) rather than just automatically.

“Children learn best when they are more involved in the learning process,” explained Thiessen in a CMU news post. “Many digital interfaces are poorly suited to children’s learning capacities, but if we can make them better, children can learn better.”

This is not to say that all books for kids should be animated. Traditional books are always going to have their own advantages, and once you get past the picture-book stage these digital innovations don’t help much.

The point, rather, is to show that digital books can be useful and aren’t a pointless addition to a kid’s library. But it’s important that the digital features are created and tuned with an eye to improving learning, and research must be done to determine exactly how that is best accomplished.

Thiessen’s study was published in the journal Developmental Psychology.

Source: Tech Crunch

Russia has begun testing a national internet system that would function as an alternative to the broader web, according to local news reports. Exactly what stage the country has reached is unclear, but certainly the goal of a resilient — and perhaps more easily controlled — internet is being pursued.

The internet, of course, is made up of a global web of infrastructure that must interface physically, virtually and, increasingly, politically with the countries to which it connects. Some countries, like China, have opted to very carefully regulate that interface, controlling which websites, apps and services can be accessed from the local side of that interface.

Russia has increasingly leaned toward that approach, with President Putin signing a law earlier this year there, Runet, which would build the necessary infrastructure to maintain, essentially, a separate internal internet should such a thing become necessary (or convenient).

Speaking earlier this week to the state-owned news outlet Tass, Putin explained that this was purely a defensive play.

Runet, he said, “is aimed only at preventing adverse consequences of global disconnection from the global network, which is largely controlled from abroad. This is the point, this is what sovereignty is — to have our resources that can be turned on so that we would not be cut from the Internet.”

More recent reports, in Tass and Pravda as relayed by the BBC, indicated that this effort has gone beyond the theoretical to the practical. Tests were done on the vulnerability of the so-called Internet of Things, which must have been disheartening if Russian IoT devices have security practices as poor as U.S. ones. Whether the local net could stand up against “external negative influences,” whatever those are, was also looked into.

It’s no small task, what Russia is attempting here, and while the talk is ostensibly of sovereignty and robust infrastructure, the tensions between the U.S., Russia, China, North Korea and other countries with advanced cyberwarfare capabilities are unmistakably also part of it.

A Russian internet disconnected from the world would probably right now be almost non-functional. Russia, like everyone else, relies on resources located elsewhere in the world constantly, and duplication of many of those resources would be necessary to make it possible for the internet to work anything like normally, should the country decide to retreat into its shell for whatever reason.

A separate DNS system would be necessary, as would physical infrastructure connecting parts of the country directly to the rest, which at present must do so through international connections. And that’s just to create the basic possibility of a working Russian intranet.

It’s hard to object to the idea of a robust “sovereign internet” should such a thing become necessary, but it’s hard not to think of it as preparation for conflict to come rather than simple investment in national infrastructure.

That said, what exactly Runet will grow to be and how it will be used are still a matter of speculation until we receive more specific reports of its capabilities and intended purposes.

Source: Tech Crunch

If you haven’t noticed, Europe’s startup scene is in full bloom, with more than $30 billion deployed in startups across the continent over the last 12 months and more than 20 countries now home to a so-called unicorn company.

Investors around the globe are jumping into the pool, too. Consider that the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) is currently investing a €300 million fund in Europe. Abu Dhabi’s state investor, Mubadala, last year announced it was launching a $400 million fund to back European startups. And that’s saying nothing of the many Europe-based venture investors who are either raising new funds or recently closed them.

Atomico, for example, one of the continent’s biggest early-stage firms, closed its most recent fund with $765 million in 2017 and is reportedly out fundraising again. Others of all different sizes have recently announced new vehicles, including Balderton Capital, which last month closed a new $400 million fund; United Ventures, a 6.5-year-old, Milan-based early-stage venture capital firm that last week closed its second fund with €120 million in capital commitments (nearly double the €70 million it raised for its debut fund); MiddleGame Ventures, a 1.5-year-old, Luxembourg-based fintech-focused investment firm that recently held a first close on a fund that’s targeting €150 million altogether; Northzone, a 23-year-old, London-based venture capital firm that closed on $500 million in capital commitments for its ninth fund (its largest to date); Ada Ventures, a new London-based seed-stage venture firm that just closed its debut fund with $34 million; and Dawn Capital, a nearly 13-year-old, U.K.-based early-stage venture firm that in summer raised $125 million for an opportunities-type fund.

To find out more about what’s happening on the ground, we sat down at Disrupt Berlin earlier this month with two London-based investors —  Carolina Brochado, who late last year left Atomico to join SoftBank’s Vision Fund, and Andrei Brasoveanu of Accel — to discuss where the money is coming from, which European cities are becoming more interesting to both of them, and some of the challenges they face in covering so many different regions.

We also talked specifically with Brochado about whether SoftBank is changing up its tactics in light of some bets that aren’t panning out as intended — and whether she has any qualms about the outfit’s biggest investor. Our conversation, edited lightly for length and clarity, follows.

TC: We’re all meeting for the first time, and I thought we could do everyone here a service who wants to understand both of you better by talking a little bit about who you are and what you focus on. Do you want to start Carolina? I know you studied in the U.S…

CB: Yes, so I’m originally from Brazil. I moved to the U.S. for university, spent over 10 years in the U.S., [and I] have worked in in large cap private equity, have worked at a pre launch, launch, [then failed] startup, and then have spent a lot of my time in Europe, which has been seven years now, at an earlier stage VC firm called Atomico . . . and for the last year, I’ve been at SoftBank Vision Fund, investing at the growth stage.

AB: I’ve been with Accel for six years. I’m originally from Romania and spent 10 years in the states like Carolina, studying and working in New York in high frequency trading. At Accel, I’ve been focused most of my time on enterprise software and financial services and I’ve been very excited to back European founders from London all the way to Bucharest. Accel is one of the few Valley-based venture firms with on-the-tground presence in Europe. We’ve been here for 20 years, and we really believe in having a local approach to investing.

TC: Carolina, you switched from Atomico to SoftBank this year. Why?

CB: There’s a lot of push and pull with these sort of things. Europe is such an incredibly exciting place right now, and to be totally honest, back [when I moved here] in 2013, I didn’t totally see it, but over the years, you realize how many incredible entrepreneurs [are here], how many incredible teams, and the opportunity that lies ahead. And firms like Accel and Atomico were paving the path of the capital structure in Europe, which is actually very young; maybe the past 15 years, there’s been VC in Europe, and now you starting to see the fruits of that and the exits and so.

So for me, part of it was while there are great funds at the early stage, there’s still a lot of underfunding at that later stage, so I was really excited about doing growth in Europe and putting significant amounts of capital behind founders who want to go for the really big outcomes.

TC: You now have an insider’s view of these two very important firms. What are some of the biggest differences between Atomico and SoftBank, aside from the different stages at which they invest — how do maybe the processes differ?

CB: There’s obviously a difference in size — Atomico was 70 people and SoftBank is a 500-person organization. There is an interesting founder-led approach to both organizations. They are both very mission- driven by founders who want to change the world and by founders who want to be the best at what they do, which is really exciting.

One of the key differences at SoftBank is that it’s really global firm [with] offices everywhere. We have offices in the U.S. We have offices in Asia. We have offices in Europe. For me, it has been a really interesting platform to see what other great founders are doing in other places of the world.

And then, just because of the sheer size of the organization, you have a group of 50-plus operating partners who may have really deep areas of domain expertise like talent but who are also helping our companies do business development, and who can look at our ecosystem — which today is over 85 portfolio companies —  and make connections, and win business and actually win profitability for companies across and within that ecosystem.

TC: You’re both [in Berlin right now] from London. Andrei, do you run into each other in deals, or are your worlds vastly different?

AB: I would say we have quite different focus areas, we’re very much early-stage focused as our sweet spot [though] some of our companies, when they get to that mature stage, may benefit from working with SoftBank.

CB: We try to stay very close to the great companies at Accel, so they’ll nudge us [when it’s the right time].

TC: Who are you seeing coming into deals who you might not have when you joined Accel in 2014?

AB: It’s interesting. Since I joined Accel, the quality of investors in Europe has increased dramatically. So we’ve seen quite a few former operators, for example, [meaning] very successful founders who are now starting the starting their own funds. We’ve seen more family offices enter the industry. We’ve seen more U.S. capital in the market. And in general, I think [all] has helped raise the bar in terms of the quality of capital available to founders across Europe. And many of these folks, especially the local players, have been good partners for us.

Source: Tech Crunch

Since roughly 2012, billionaire Bill Gates has been participating in Reddit’s annual Secret Santa gift exchange, which matches Reddit users with internet strangers who give them presents.

He seems to relish the role. For example, in 2017, he was matched with a cat lover, sending off a giant load of feline-themed gifts, including a large stuffed cartoon cat and $750 in donations to her favorite animal charities. Last year, his gift recipient was a self-described miniature horse owner who loves yarn, natural fibers, and card-making. Gates sent him a bounty of yarn, decorating tape, pencils, postcards, sketchbooks, a custom-made blanket for his horse, and a signed copy of a “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing” by Hank Green, the man’s favorite author.

This year, the lucky Redditor who found herself on the receiving end of 81 pounds of gifts from Gates was a 33-year-old, Detroit-area marketer who told MarketWatch yesterday, “I always thought it would be super cool to be matched with him some day, but I never really would have expected this to happen to me.”

The woman — whose Reddit profile features a picture of her hugging the “Star Wars” character Chewbacca and that refers to Harry Potter and other books and video games — was also reportedly sent a Harry Potter Santa hat; Lego building sets that include a giant Hogwarts castle; a handmade quilt depicting scenes from Nintendo’s “Legend of Zelda” game series; and “Twin Peaks” memorabilia, including an L.L. Bean jacket worn by one of the crew members.

Gates, a renowned book lover who regularly shares his book recommendations, also sent her a bound manuscript of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” lines from which the woman had incorporated into her wedding earlier this year.

Making the gift even more special, it came with scans of Fitzgerald’s handwritten notes as he was working on the now classic novel.

Gates has been a pioneer on the charitable front for many years. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Gates and wife Melinda Gates donated an estimated $4.78 billion dollars in 2018, bringing the total they’ve given through their foundation and other family foundations to $45.5 billion.

Gates also famously created The Giving Pledge with billionaire Warren Buffett. The pledge invites billionaires to commit to giving away most of their fortunes to charity.

Even while only one Redditor benefits from Gate’s munificence each holiday season, plenty of others of the platform’s users benefit from being part of its Secret Santa community.

Among some of the presents sent: Google gifted one user a Pixel 4 phone. Another received a 3D printer from their “fantastic” Secret Santa. Yet another Redditor received a handmade Captain America shield — along with a smaller handmade shield for his dog.

Source: Tech Crunch

Two and a half years after being blocked by the Turkish government, Wikipedia appears to have received a reprieve. The country’s constitutional court this week ruled that the April 2017 ban violated freedom of expression laws.

The Wikimedia Foundation has been arguing the ban since May, when the parent organization took the country to European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The foundation won in a 10-6 court decision that is expected to reinstate the user-edited online encyclopedia in Turkey.

In 2017, Turkey became the second country to completely ban access to the site, due to entries claiming ties to Isis and other terrorist groups. Turkey called the move an “administrative measure,” using a law designed to curb online security threats.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tweeted a photo of himself in front of the Turkish flag, along with the words “Welcome back, Turkey!” However, no time frame has been given for when the site will be reinstated in the country. 

“While today’s ruling from the Constitutional Court is a welcome development for free knowledge and the people of Turkey, there are other threats to our ability to continue to freely, openly, and collaboratively build the largest collection of knowledge in human history,” the foundation wrote in a post celebrating the ruling. “Despite this, today is a good day for those of us that believe in the power of knowledge and dialogue. We are encouraged by this outcome and will continue to work towards a world in which knowledge is freely accessible to all.”

Source: Tech Crunch