Announcing the Agenda for TC Sessions: Robotics/AI at UC Berkeley on April 18

We’re bringing TC Sessions: Robotics + AI back to UC Berkeley on April 18, and we’re excited to announce our jam-packed agenda that highlights the best and brightest in robotics and – new for 2019 – artificial intelligence.

For months we’ve been selecting the most innovative startups and top leaders from established tech companies working in Robotics and AI. There have been huge leaps forward in this field the past year, and we’re thrilled to bring you the latest and greatest.

Early-bird tickets ($100 savings) are currently available for a limited time – you can  pick up tickets here before prices increase.

We’ve still got some key guests to announce, and will be adding some new names to the agenda over the next few weeks, so keep your eyes open. In the meantime, check out these agenda highlights:

Agenda

9:35 AM – 10:00 AM

Building a Better Robotics Company with Nima Keivan (Canvas), Manish Kothari (SRI International), and Melonee Wise (Fetch Robotics)

Many have tried, but few have succeeded in launching a successful robotics company. A trio of experts, including Melonee Wise (Fetch Robotics), Manish Kothari (SRI) and Nima Keivan (Canvas) will discuss the successes and pitfalls of entering the world of robotic startups.

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10:00 AM – 10:25 AM

Can’t We All Just Get Along? with Anca Dragan (UC Berkeley), Rana el Kaliouby (Affectiva), and Matt Willis (Softbank Robotics)

Robots and humans are working and living together more than ever, and that means we have to watch out for one another – literally. A trio of guests will be exploring the increasingly important world of human-robot interaction (HRI).

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10:25 AM – 10:50 AM

This Reality Does Not Exist: Trust in an Age of Synthetic Media with Alexei Efros (UC Berkeley) and Hany Farid (Dartmouth College)

AI-based tools are proving capable of fabricating or modifying imagery and audio in ways that are nearly indistinguishable from reality. How can these systems and media be detected, and how can we trust anything when everything could be faked?

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10:50 AM – 11:15 AM

Coming Soon!

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11:35 AM – 11:55 AM

Artificial Intelligence: Minds, Economies and Systems that Learn with Ken Goldberg (UC Berkeley) and Michael Jordan (UC Berkeley)

AI and robots are being adopted by industry after industry, ushering in a new era in technology and services — but one that needs to be built as it grows. Berkeley’s Ken Goldberg and Michael Jordan discuss the advances that got us here and what comes next.

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11:55 AM – 12:20 PM

AI Startups That Enable AI with Ali Farhadi (Xnor.ai), Daryn Nakhuda (Mighty AI)

Building AI is a difficult task on its own, and building a startup around it is even harder. Mighty AI, Xnor and DefinedCrowd have all shown that it’s possible to create powerful AI tools as well as empower others — while running a real business as well.

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12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

WORKSHOP: How to Launch a Robotics Startup with Eric Migicovsky (Y Combinator)

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1:30 PM – 1:55 PM

Putting Drones to Work with, Grant Canary (Droneseed), Laura Major (Aria Insights) and Arnaud Thiercelin (DJI)

Drones are being employed for more than just buzzing around the beach and recording weddings. In the last few years, we’ve seen drones that help stop poachers, deliver packages, inspect pipelines, and more. What’s next?

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2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

Q&A with Founders: Your chance to ask questions to some of the greatest minds in technology. Workshop Room. 

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2:35 PM – 3:05 PM

Investing In Robotics and AI: Lessons from the Industry’s VCs with Peter Barrett (Playground Global), Hidetaka Aoki (Global Brain), Helen Liang (FoundersX Ventures), and Andy Wheeler (GV)

Leading investors will discuss the rising tide of venture capital funding in robotics and AI. The investors bring a combination of early-stage investing and corporate venture capital expertise, sharing a fondness for the wild world of robotics investing.

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3:10 PM – 3:45 PM

Q&A with Investors: Your chance to ask questions to some of the greatest investors in robotics and AI with Peter Barrett (Playground Global), Hidetaka Aoki (Global Brain), Helen Liang (FoundersX Ventures). Workshop Room.

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3:55 PM – 4:15 PM

The Best Robots on Four Legs with Marc Raibert (Boston Dynamics)

Boston Dynamics rocked the world with the robots like Big Dog, Cheetah and Atlas. As one of the company’s latest creations SpotMini comes to market, CEO Marc Raibert will discuss the company’s journey to productizing. 

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4:15 PM – 4:35 PM

Coming Soon!

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4:35 PM – 5:00 PM

Building the Robots that Build with Noah Ready-Campbell (BUILT Robotics) and Saurabh Ladha (Doxel AI)

Can robots help us build structures faster, smarter, and cheaper? Built Robotics makes a self-driving excavator. Doxel builds a robot that helps to monitor and inspect job sites. We’ll talk with the founders of these two companies to learn how and when robots will become a part of the construction crew.

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Tickets are on sale now

• $249 Early Bird Tickets ($100 Savings) – Book Here
• $45 Student Tickets – Book Here
• $1500 Startup Demo Table Package (includes 3 tickets) – Book Here 

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/announcing-the-agenda-for-tc-sessions-robotics-ai-at-uc-berkeley-on-april-18/

Amazon launches new tools that allow brands to proactively fight counterfeiting

Amazon this morning announced a new initiative focused on reducing counterfeiting on its site called Project Zero – a name that references Amazon’s lofty goal of driving counterfeit sales to zero. The program will take advantage of Amazon’s technology, including machine learning capabilities, combined with brands’ own knowledge of their intellectual property in order to automatically and continuously scan Amazon’s store to identify and proactively remove violations, among other things.

Brands who want to utilize the new tools will provide Amazon with their logos, trademarks and other key data about their brand. Amazon will then scan its 5 billion product listing updates per day, looking for any suspected counterfeits, it says.

The idea here is to put more technology behind the search for counterfeits, in order to become more proactive instead of reactive. In the past, brands would need to file a counterfeit report with Amazon in order to take action. The new tools allow brands to directly remove and control listings from Amazon’s store without having to first contact Amazon.

Another optional service involved with the larger Project Zero program is product serialization.

This service will allow Amazon to scan to confirm the authenticity of every one of a brand’s products purchased on the site. It provides a unique code for each manufactured unit, which are put on products during the manufacturing process. When the product is later ordered, Amazon scans this code to verify the purchase is authentic. If it’s not, Amazon can detect and stop a counterfeit item before it reaches the customer.

While Project Zero enrollment itself is free, brand that use the product serialization service will incur a cost between $0.01 and $0.05 per unit, based on volume, Amazon notes.

Counterfeiting has become a serious problem on Amazon, largely due to the size and scale of Amazon’s third-party marketplace, which it does little to regulate. Some of these items are never even touched by Amazon, but are sold and shipped by the third-party seller themselves. Others are only fulfilled by Amazon, but that doesn’t include a verification process.

However, those will bear a “Fulfilled by Amazon” label, which some consumers misunderstand to mean they’re trustworthy because Amazon is somehow involved.

According to a study by advocacy group The Counterfeit Report last year, there have been around 58,000 counterfeit products on Amazon since May 2016, Engadget reported. But the total number of fakes is much higher, because TCR only accounted for the brands it represents.

Amazon has been repeatedly called out by brands for effectively being “complicit” with the counterfeiting business, always dusting aside issues because they involved third-party sellers, not Amazon’s own store.

This has also allowed Amazon to escape many legal issues around counterfeiting in the courts, though it continues to face lawsuits. For instance, Daimler AG sued Amazon in 2016 for profiting from sales of wheels that violated its patents. That same year, a family sued Amazon when a counterfeit hoverboard burned down their house.

Apple also sued Mobile Star LLC for making counterfeit Apple chargers, which it tried to pass off as authentic on Amazon, which brought the retailer’s name to the news.

More recently, Amazon has inserted itself into the legal battles. Last year, it filed three lawsuits in partnership with fashion designer Vera Bradley and mobile accessories maker Otterbox, over counterfeits.

Counterfeiting is not only detrimental to consumers and the brands being knocked off, it impacts Amazon’s business directly – particularly in the increasingly important fashion category.

Many fashion brands won’t work with Amazon period. Birkenstock, for example, decided to stop doing business with Amazon. LVMH (Celine, Dior, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, and others), said last year that the business of Amazon “does not fit” with its brands, and Swatch backed out of a deal to sell on Amazon in 2017 when the retailer refused to implement proactive protections against counterfeiters.

Despite all these issues, recent pressure from the U.S. government may have been what helped turn the tide here – forcing Amazon and others in the industry to take counterfeiting more seriously.

Last year, federal investigators purchased counterfeit products off the biggest and most well-known e-commerce sites, including Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Newegg, and Sears Marketplace. Of 47 products, 20 were counterfeit – including Urban Decay cosmetics, Yeti mugs, Nike Air Jordan shoes, phone chargers and more.

The e-commerce companies, naturally, expressed righteous condemnation of counterfeiting and pledged to work with policy makers on resolutions.

Amazon says its new Project Zero tools have been in testing with several brands before today’s launch, including the above-mentioned Vera Bradley; pet anxiety products manufacturer Thunderworks; mobile accessories maker Kenu; and lint remover manufacturer Chom Chom Roller. During the testing period, Amazon claims it was able to proactively stop 100 times more suspected counterfeit products, compared to what it reactively removes based on brands’ reports.

“Project Zero, with its automated protections and the self-service removal of counterfeit products, is a significant development that will help ensure our customers receive authentic Vera Bradley products from Amazon,” said Mark Dely, chief legal & administrator officer at Vera Bradley.

“Amazon’s product serialization service has been a game changer for us. We are excited to have this self-service counterfeit removal tool for the US Marketplace and consider this to be an insurance policy,” said Ken Minn, ceo, Kenu.

Project Zero is placing a lot of trust in the brands submitting the claims, so Amazon warns it will monitor usage for accuracy of their reports.

“We are providing brands with an unprecedented level of responsibility, and we are willing to do so because we believe that the combined strengths of Amazon and brands can drive counterfeits to zero,” the company writes on the Project Zero website FAQ. “Brands must maintain a high bar for accuracy in order to maintain their Project Zero privileges. We have a number of processes in place to promote accuracy, including required training as part of Project Zero enrollment and ongoing monitoring to prevent misuse of our tools.” 

Project Zero is launching first as an invite-only product in the U.S. which brands can sign up for to join, before rolling out more broadly. Participants must have a government-registered trademark and be enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry to qualify.

 

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-launches-new-tools-that-allow-brands-to-proactively-fight-counterfeiting/

Amazon Prime members can choose a weekly delivery date with launch of ‘Amazon Day’

Amazon this morning launched a new delivery option for Prime members that will allow them to control when their orders arrive, Amazon Day. The option lets shoppers pick a day of the week to take delivery of their recent orders. The boxes arrive together on the selected Amazon Day in fewer boxes, the company says, which makes deliveries more predictable.

The move clearly benefits Amazon by reducing the number of deliveries drivers have to make to the same address, while positioning the option as a new Prime “perk.” However, there are benefits to grouping shipments like this. For example, if you live in an area where package theft is a concern, you could make your “Amazon Day” a day you are scheduled to work from home, for example.

It also means you’ll have fewer boxes to break down and recycle, which could be useful for regular Amazon shoppers concerned about waste.

Amazon says it tested the new shipping option with a group of Prime members and found that Amazon Day reduced packaging by “tens of thousands” of boxes over the course of several months. An Amazon rep would not confirm how many Prime members were participating in that test, however.

The new delivery option is considered part of Amazon’s larger set of sustainability initiatives focused on achieving Shipment Zero – its plans to make 50 percent of all Amazon shipments net zero carbon by 2030.

“Amazon Day adds another level of convenience to the many shipping benefits Prime members already enjoy. Prime members can now choose to get their orders delivered together in fewer boxes whenever possible on the day that works best for them,” said Maria Renz, Vice President, Delivery Experience at Amazon, in a statement.

To use the new feature, Prime members can select the “Amazon Day” option at checkout and pick the day of the week that works for them. Throughout the week, as you place more orders you’ll continue to pick “Amazon Day” as your delivery option. The items then deliver free on the day of your choosing.

Most items can be ordered for Amazon Day delivery up to two days before the chosen day arrives.

However, setting an Amazon Day option doesn’t prevent you from ordering other items for faster delivery, if needed. That means you can still set deliveries to free two-day shipping, one-day shipping, same-day shipping or two-hour delivery, where offered. In addition, your Subscribe & Save items will continue to ship on their own schedule.

Amazon currently runs several initiatives aimed at reducing its impact on the environment and energy consumption, including things like Frustration-Free Packaging and Ship in Own Container. It also has a network of solar and wind farms, solar on its fulfillment center rooftops and investments in the circular economy, though it has recently been dinged by Greenpeace for not moving quickly on commitments to shift to renewable energy.

Other retailers are making similar moves to focus on their environmental impact of e-commerce. Walmart this week announced its own plastic packaging waste reduction commitments across over 30,000 SKUs, and Etsy said it had become the first global e-commerce company to completely offset carbon emissions from shipping by purchasing offsets from its partner, 3Degrees.

These decisions aren’t entirely altruistic. Consumers – especially those in the younger demographic – are increasingly concerned about the sustainability factor and environmental impacts of e-commerce purchases, and this can influence their behavior when it comes to where to shop.

Amazon Day is rolling out today to all Prime members in the U.S.

 

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-prime-members-can-choose-a-weekly-delivery-date-with-launch-of-amazon-day/

NetEase is the latest Chinese tech giant to lay off a big chunk of its staff

NetEase, China’s second-biggest online games publisher with a growing ecommerce segment, is laying off a significant number of its employees, adding to a list of Chinese tech giants that have shed staff following the Lunar New Year.

A NetEase employee who was recently let go confirmed with TechCrunch that the company had fired a large number of people spanning multiple departments, including ecommerce, education, agriculture (yes, founder and executive officer Ding Lei has a thing for organic farming) and public relations, although downsizing at Yanxuan, its ecommerce brand that sells private-label goods online and offline, had started before the Lunar New Year holiday.

Multiple Chinese media outlets covered the layoff on Wednesday. According to a report from Caijing Magazine, Yanxuan fired 30-40 percent of its staff; the agricultural brand Weiyang got a 50 percent cut; the education unit downsized from 300 to 200 employees; and 40 percent of NetEase’s public relations staff was gone.

A spokesperson from NetEase evaded TechCrunch’s questions about the layoff but said the company is “indeed undergoing a structural optimization to narrow its focus.” The goal, according to the person, is to “boost innovation and organizational efficiency so NetEase can fully play to its own strengths and adapt to market competition in the longer term.”

NetEase CEO Ding Lei pictured picking Longjing tea leaves in Hangzhou. Photo: NetEase Yanxuan via Weibo

Oddly, ecommerce and education appear to be some of NetEase’s brighter spots. The company singled them out alongside music streaming during its latest earnings call as the three sectors that saw “strong profit growth potential” and “will be the focus of [the company’s] next phase of strategic growth.” The staff cuts, then, may represent an urgency to tighten the purse strings for even NetEase’s rosiest businesses.

The shakeup fits into market speculation about company staff cuts to save costs as China copes with a weakening domestic economy. JD.com, a rival to Alibaba, is firing 10 percent of its senior management to cut costs, Caixin reported last week. Ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing plans to let go 15 percent of its staff this year as part of a reorganization to boost internal efficiency, though it’s adding new members to focus on more promising segments.

China’s Didi is laying off 15% of its staff

Alibaba took an unexpected turn, announcing last week that it will continue to hire new talent in 2019. “We are poised to provide more resources to our platforms to help businesses navigate current environment and create more job opportunities overall,” the firm said in a statement.

2018 was a tough year for China’s games companies of all sorts. The industry took a hit after regulators froze all licensing approvals to go through a reshuffle, dragging down stock prices of big players like Tencent and NetEase. These companies continue to feel the chill even after approvals resumed, as the newly minted regulatory body imposes stricter checks on games, slowing down the application process altogether and delaying companies’ plans to monetize lucrative new titles.

That bleak domestic outlook compelled NetEase to take what Ding dubs a “two-legged” approach to game publishing, with one foot set in China and the other extending abroad. Tencent, too, has been finding new channels for its games through regional partners like Sea’s Garena in Southeast Asia.

NetEase started in 1997 and earned its name by making PC games and providing email services in the early years of the Chinese internet. More recently the company has intended to diversify its business by incubating projects across the board. It has so far enjoyed growth in segments like music streaming and ecommerce (which is reportedly swallowing up Amazon China’s import-led service) while stepping back from others such as comics publishing, an asset it is selling to youth-focused video streaming site Bilibili.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/netease-layoff/

Choice and obligation

If it’s an obligation, then you don’t have a choice.

Pretending you do is simply a way to create frustration. Free yourself to simply do what you have to do.

On the other hand, if you do have a choice (and you probably do) then it doesn’t make sense to treat it as an obligation. Own the choice.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/599034044/0/sethsblog~Choice-and-obligation/

Netflix may be losing $192M per month from piracy, cord cutting study claims

As many as 1 in 5 people today are mooching off of someone else’s account when streaming video from Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Video, according to a new study from CordCutting.com. Of these, Netflix tends to be pirated for the longest period — 26 months, compared with 16 months for Amazon Prime Video or 11 months for Hulu. That could be because Netflix freeloaders often mooch off their family instead of a friend — 48 percent use their parents’ login, while another 14 percent use their sister or brother’s credentials, the firm found.

At a base price of $7.99 per month (the study was performed before Netflix’s January 2019 price increase), freeloading users could save $207.74 over a 26-month period. At scale, these losses can add up, the study claims.

The report estimates Netflix could be losing $192 million in monthly revenue from piracy — more than either Amazon or Hulu, at $45 million per month and $40 million per month, respectively.

Millennials, not surprisingly, account for much of the freeloading. They’re the largest demographic pirating Netflix (18 percent) and Hulu’s service (20 percent). But oddly, it was Baby Boomers who were more likely to borrow someone else’s account to access Amazon Prime Video.

There’s an argument that those who pirate would never be paying customers, so these aren’t true losses. It’s the same sort of thing that was said about Napster mp3 downloads back in the day, or about those pirating movies through The Pirate Bay. But there is some portion of the freeloading population that claims they would pay, if they lost access.

According to the study, 59.3 percent said they would pay for Netflix (or around 14 million people), contributing at least $112 million in monthly revenue, if they lost access. And 37.8 percent, or 2 million, said they’d pay for Hulu; 27.6 percent, or 1 million people, said they’d pay for Prime Video.

Of course, there can be discrepancies between what consumers say they will do versus what they actually end up doing. So such claims that “I’d definitely pay,” have to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

It’s worth noting, too, this study calculated figures by looking at Netflix’s single-screen-at-a-time account — in theory, the one meant to be used by a single individual and not shared as a family plan, in order to keep the estimates conservative. The consumer survey defined mooching by asking users if they use a service they don’t pay for, then asked what they would or would not pay for themselves, if that access fell through.

Hulu, at least, has more recently tried to make its service more appealing to penny-pinchers. At its new price — $5.99 per month, rolled out this week — it’s making it harder to justify freeloading.

Netflix, on the other hand, seems to know its value, and raised prices this year so its base plan is a dollar more at $8.99 per month, and its most popular plan has climbed to $12.99 per month.

The full study offers other details on cord-cutting trends, including breakdowns by gender and details on who accounts are mooched from, among other things.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/27/netflix-may-be-losing-192m-per-month-from-piracy-cord-cutting-study-claims/

Dow Jones’ watchlist of 2.4 million high-risk individuals has leaked

A watchlist of risky individuals and corporate entities owned by Dow Jones has been exposed, after a company with access to the database left it on a server without a password.

Bob Diachenko, an independent security researcher, found the Amazon Web Services-hosted Elasticsearch database exposing more than 2.4 million records of individuals or business entities.

The data, since secured, is the financial giant’s Watchlist database, which companies use as part of their risk and compliance efforts. Other financial companies, like Thomson Reuters, have their own databases of high-risk clients, politically exposed persons and terrorists — but have also been exposed over the years through separate security lapses.

A 2010-dated brochure billed the Dow Jones Watchlist as allowing customers to “easily and accurately identify high-risk clients with detailed, up-to-date profiles” on any individual or company in the database. At the time, the database had 650,000 entries, the brochure said.

That includes current and former politicians, individuals or companies under sanctions or convicted of high-profile financial crimes such as fraud, or anyone with links to terrorism. Many of those on the list include “special interest persons,” according to the records in the exposed database seen by TechCrunch.

Diachenko, who wrote up his findings, said the database was “indexed, tagged and searchable.”

From a 2010-dated brochure of Dow Jones’ Watchlist, which at the time had 650,000 names of individuals and entities. The exposed database had 2.4 million records. (Screenshot: TechCrunch)

Many financial institutions and government agencies use the database to approve or deny financing, or even in the shuttering of bank accounts, the BBC previously reported. Others have reported that it can take little or weak evidence to land someone on the watchlists.

The data is all collected from public sources, such as news articles and government filings. Many of the individual records were sourced from Dow Jones’ Factiva news archive, which ingests data from many news sources — including the Dow Jones-owned The Wall Street Journal.

But the very existence of a name, or the reason why a name exists in the database, is proprietary and closely guarded.

The records we saw vary wildly, but can include names, addresses, cities and their location, whether they are deceased or not and, in some cases, photographs. Diachenko also found dates of birth and genders. Each profile had extensive notes collected from Factiva and other sources.

One name found at random was Badruddin Haqqani, a commander in the Haqqani guerilla insurgent network in Afghanistan affiliated with the Taliban. In 2012, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Haqqani and others for their involvement in financing terrorism. He was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan months later.

The database record on Haqqani, who was categorized under “sanctions list” and terror,” included (and condensed for clarity):

DOW JONES NOTES:
Killed in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area on 21-Aug-2012.

OFFICE OF FOREIGN ASSETS CONTROL (OFAC) NOTES:

Eye Color Brown; Hair Color Brown; Individual's Primary Language Pashto; Operational Commander of the Haqqani Network

EU NOTES:

Additional information from the narrative summary of reasons for listing provided by the Sanctions Committee:

Badruddin Haqqani is the operational commander for the Haqqani Network, a Taliban-affiliated group of militants that operates from North Waziristan Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The Haqqani Network has been at the forefront of insurgent activity in Afghanistan, responsible for many high-profile attacks. The Haqqani Network's leadership consists of the three eldest sons of its founder Jalaluddin Haqqani, who joined Mullah Mohammed Omar's Taliban regime in the mid-1990s. Badruddin is the son of Jalaluddin and brother to Nasiruddin Haqqani and Sirajuddin Haqqani, as well as nephew of Khalil Ahmed Haqqani.

Badruddin helps lead Taliban associated insurgents and foreign fighters in attacks against targets in south- eastern Afghanistan. Badruddin sits on the Miram Shah shura of the Taliban, which has authority over Haqqani Network activities.

Badruddin is also believed to be in charge of kidnappings for the Haqqani Network. He has been responsible for the kidnapping of numerous Afghans and foreign nationals in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

UN NOTES:

Other information: Operational commander of the Haqqani Network and member of the Taliban shura in Miram Shah. Has helped lead attacks against targets in southeastern Afghanistan. Son of Jalaluddin Haqqani (TI.H.40.01.). Brother of Sirajuddin Jallaloudine Haqqani (TI.H.144.07.) and Nasiruddin Haqqani (TI.H.146.10.). Nephew of Khalil Ahmed Haqqani (TI.H.150.11.). Reportedly deceased in late August 2012.

FEDERAL FINANCIAL MONITORING SERVICES NOTES:

Entities and individuals against whom there is evidence of involvement in terrorism.


Dow Jones spokesperson Sophie Bent said: “This dataset is part of our risk and compliance feed product, which is entirely derived from publicly available sources. At this time our review suggests this resulted from an authorized third party’s misconfiguration of an AWS server, and the data is no longer available.”

We asked Dow Jones specific questions, such as who the source of the data leak was and if the exposure would be reported to U.S. regulators and European data protection authorities, but the company would not comment on the record.

Two years ago, Dow Jones admitted a similar cloud storage misconfiguration exposed the names and contact information of 2.2 million customers, including subscribers of The Wall Street Journal. The company described the event as an “error.”

Massive mortgage and loan data leak gets worse as original documents also exposed

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/27/dow-jones-watchlist-leak/

Hands-on with Microsoft’s new HoloLens 2

Earlier this week, Microsoft used its MWC press conference to announce the next version of its HoloLens mixed reality visor. When it demoed the first version back in 2015, quite a few pundits assumed that the company had somehow faked the demos because this kind of real-time tracking and gesture recognition, combined with a relatively high-res display and packaged as a standalone device, had never been done before.

The fact that Microsoft took its sweet time to release this next version clearly shows that it wanted to gather feedback from its first set of users and developers who wrote apps for it. Microsoft also wasn’t under a lot of pressure to release an update, given that it never had a real competitor, with maybe the exception of Magic Leap, which is still in its very early days.

If version 1 came as a major surprise, then version 2, which I’ve now had time to try at MWC, is in many ways the natural evolution of the original promise: it’s more comfortable to wear, the field of view is large enough to feel more natural and the interaction model has been tweaked to make using HoloLens apps faster and easier. The hardware, too, has obviously been brought up to modern specs.

The first thing you’ll notice when you try the new version is that the initial calibration process that measures the distance between your eyes is now automatic. You essentially play a little game where you track a light in front of you and the new gaze recognition system takes care of setting up the calibration. Once that’s done, a hummingbird appears and lands on your hand. That’s also when you realize how much bigger the field of view has become. The bird is big enough that I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have fit into the relatively small box that restricted the HoloLens 1’s field of view.

Don’t get me wrong, the experience is still not quite what Microsoft’s videos would have you believe. You are still very aware of the fact that there’s an abrupt end between where the AR images appear and where they end — but it’s far less jarring now that you have this bigger box. As far as the resolution goes, the specs are pretty much the same and there’s no practical difference that I noted.

The other thing you’ll notice right from the get-go is that Microsoft wasn’t kidding when it said that the new HoloLens would be far more comfortable to wear. The original felt clamped to your head (and for me, it had a tendency to slowly slide down my face) and you never quite forgot how heavy it was. The new one rests comfortably on your forehead, and, while you still essentially clamp it to your face by tightening a knob at the back, wearing it feels far more natural. The actual device is only a few grams lighter than the first edition, but with what I assume is a different weight distribution, it simply feels lighter. And if you wear glasses, then there’s no pressure on those anymore either because none of the weight rests on your nose.

Another major difference: The HoloLens 2 is now a real visor that you can flip open. So while you can obviously look through the lenses, you can now also easily move the HoloLens away from your face.

As you go through the process of trying the new HoloLens, you’ll sooner or later come across menus, buttons and sliders. In the first version, the hand and gesture tracking wasn’t quite there to let you interact with those naturally. You’d have to use special gestures for that. Now, you simply tap on them as if you were using a smartphone. And when there’s a slider, you grab it and move it. The new demo applications that Microsoft showed off at MWC make good use of all of these.

And there’s another difference: This time around, Microsoft is clearly stating that the HoloLens 2 is for business users, and all of the demos focused on those. Gone are the days of shooting aliens as they break through your walls or playing virtual Minecraft on a table in your living room. Indeed, as Lorraine Bardeen, general manager of Engineering, D365 Mixed Reality Apps at Microsoft told me, the company clearly encouraged a lot of experimentation when it launched the first version. By now, those use cases have become clear.

“When we first started with HoloLens, both internally and in the first wave when we talked about, that this was a completely wide open technology,” she said. “It’s like if you had asked 30 years ago, what could you do with a personal computer. We started by making a bunch of sample applications.” Those applications showed off what you could do in gaming, communications, commercial applications, etc.

“We started by saying that this could be and do anything,” she added. But as HoloLens 1 arrived in the hands of users, a couple of clusters emerged and it’s those that Microsoft wants to focus on for the best out-of-box experience. But it’s also worth noting that Microsoft has committed to keeping HoloLens an open ecosystem. So if game developers want to create games — or their own game stores — there’s nothing holding them back.

Even though it’s now a far more capable device, at $3,500, it’s not a consumer device, and I don’t expect we’ll see any AAA games ported to HoloLens 2 anytime soon.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/27/hands-on-with-microsofts-new-hololens-2/

How Amazon took 50% of the e-commerce market and what it means for the rest of us

Jun-Sheng Li Contributor

Jun-Sheng (Jun) Li is an Executive in Residence at Canvas Ventures and was the former senior vice president of Walmart's global e-commerce supply chain.

As SVP of Walmart’s global e-commerce supply chain for five years (until 2018), I had a front row seat to how brick-and-mortar retailers were responding to Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce. Most of us were alarmed. And who could blame us? Today, Amazon has nearly 50 percent of all e-commerce trade.

The way I see it, if you are a brick-and-mortar retailer, you either embrace a digital strategy to become omnichannel or do nothing and become irrelevant.  To fully appreciate the gravity of the situation, let’s step back to understand how we got here. And importantly, start with what I believe is the single, biggest challenge for retailers today.

Holy Grail: Become Truly Omnichannel

Omnichannel retailing has become the goal that every retailer is aiming for — but few know how to achieve. In a nutshell, omnichannel simply means providing customers a seamless, continuous experience wherever customers would like to shop – across any device or store location – with a unified brand experience.

For example, I can buy a pair of shoes from Nordstrom using my smartphone and choose to pick up my purchase at a store or have it delivered to my home. If I want to return the shoes for any reason, I can do so by mail or return them at a store. My interaction with Nordstrom consistently flows from one channel to another.

But from a brick-and-mortar retailer’s perspective, that’s easier said than done.

A Lot More Moving Parts

They say the “devil’s in the details” and I would add the “details are in the supply chain.” And today’s supply chain is more complex than ever – especially if you’re a traditional, brick-and-mortar retailer striving to transform into an omnichannel. To start, you have to get your head around doing things very differently. You will be:

• Distributing products to millions of homes instead of hundreds of stores
• Managing millions of SKUs (stock keeping units) instead of thousands
• Shipping to homes in parcels (including last-mile delivery) instead of truckloads to stores
• Running fulfillment centers (FCs) in addition to distribution centers (DCs). FCs ship goods directly to customers. DCs ship goods to stores.

Want to Be an Omnichannel?

Be Ready to Add “Fulfillment Centers” to Your Existing Mix of “Distribution Centers”. The level of complexity will increase by orders of magnitude.

Three Key Challenges to Omnichannel Excellence

These are the top-three most intransigent challenges you will face in your omnichannel quest:

• Organizational and Management Constraints
• People can be resistant to change. Many find it hard to think in new paradigms.
• Different business units have different processes, KPIs (key performance indicators) and incentives.

Sharing of assets across all channels can be difficult. For example, how should you allocate warehouse space and balance the availability of products (i.e. inventory) between online and in-store sales?

Process and Systems Challenges

• First you need to plan: you must aggregate demand forecasting and planning for both physical and online sales by channel.
• Then figure out what you have: Determine product assortment across all channels: DCs, FCs, your own stores and even third-party locations like a marketplace vendor.
• Lastly, you need to know where to ship your products from. You must instantaneously track what was sold against a global inventory spread across a myriad of locations.

Continuous Innovation

A brick-and-mortar retailer will need to continually learn new processes and technologies that impact your supply chain. For example:

• Learn new processes when integrating FCs into your supply chain network. This includes new ways to receive, sort, store, pick, pack, ship, house products in lockers or stores for drive-through and pick-ups. These processes are completely different from what is used at traditional DCs or stores.
• Keep abreast of packaging technology, both the method of packing (optimizing how much you can fit into a package) and the materials (consider what’s best for long distance, the environment, costs, and the protection of the product, especially if it involves home delivery of groceries with thermal foam or totes.)
• Meet the demands of home grocery shopping and “last mile” deliveries. In addition to delivering goods in full truckloads from DCs to stores, you must learn how to operate so-called “milk runs” from stores to customer homes. When delivering groceries to a home, you must adhere to certain time slots and sometimes make “live deliveries” to ensure perishable goods are received promptly and safely. This entails a constantly refreshed and technologically modern TMS (Transportation Management System).

 Amazon Had a Wide, Open Field

Going back to the headline of this article, how did Amazon become the e-commerce behemoth that it is today with seemingly little resistance from traditional retailers? Was the brick-and-mortar executives asleep at the wheel? To answer that question, some historical framing could help: 

The Four Waves of Ecommerce

So What’s a Retailer to Do?

I think we’re at the point of no return. The omnichannel train has left the station.  What would I do if I ran a retail business today? First, I would accept the fact that customers now love to shop both online and offline, and they expect 2-day shipping for certain products and near flawless execution. The bar has been set high by Amazon. Then I would create a game plan that leverages my existing physical assets like warehouses, distribution centers, and stores to offer new services like ship-from-store or pickup-at-store. I would also build new fulfillment centers specifically to fulfill online orders and ship to customers’ homes.

Although Amazon dominates e-commerce, there are multitudes of department stores and retail brands with successful digital platforms. I was on the Walmart team from 2013 to 2018 when Walmart invested heavily in their omnichannel strategy.

On February 19, 2019, Walmart announced their FY 2019 Q4 results which showed the company grew e-commerce sales by 43 percent year-over-year in its last quarter, blowing past estimates for the holiday season.

Of course, many factors go into an effective omnichannel strategy. The biggest factor, in my mind, is simply to gather the corporate will and get started.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/27/how-amazon-took-50-of-the-e-commerce-market-and-what-it-means-for-the-rest-of-us/

Why longer term sheets are better

Recently in a conversation, the length of term sheets came as a topic (I assure you, it was a riveting conversation). The complaint was that a term sheet which had recently been received was too long, and therefore the VC who sent it wasn’t being founder friendly. The travails of successfully raising money!

Actually though, a longer term sheet is much more founder friendly and good business practice, and founders should be leery of VCs bearing short contracts.

Historically (i.e. about 6 years ago), term sheets used to be staid affairs, printed on plain white paper in standard Times New Roman font right out of Word. It was a wretched and horrifying world until the cool VCs showed up, who added design accoutrements (Bolded section heads! Logos! Colors!) while claiming that they had a “single-page” term sheet for founders, implying that the term sheet’s simplicity and prettiness showed that they weren’t really investors, but more like a Brooklyn barista with an art side hustle (and a lot of cash).

Here’s the thing, term sheets have an incredibly important purpose, which is to set forth in clear language the terms of a deal. Unfortunately in modern venture capital, there are a lot of terms that have to be negotiated in any equity round, from financial terms to option pools, to board structure, to voting rights on major business decisions like selling the company, and much more. Simpler term sheets either relegate many of these items to “standard venture capital terms apply” or some other vague language, or just wholly don’t mention them at all.

The challenge is that once the term sheet is signed, it becomes the blueprint by which the legal counsels for the VC and founder begin to write up the legal contracts that allows the VC to buy equity in the startup. When term sheets are clear, precise, and comprehensive, the lawyers just go to work and turn those agreed-upon terms into legal language in relatively short order.

When there are key terms that are “standard” or absent from a term sheet though, lawyers do what lawyers have to do: they negotiate for their respective party. Suddenly a term that seems fairly standard is up for debate, and unless a founder (and their VC) is paying very close attention to the legal process (from experience, no one really is), then the legal bills for the round can spiral very, very rapidly. That can pose a double whammy for a startup, since many VCs continue to charge the legal fees of conducting a round to the startup they are investing in.

I’ve seen founders in absolute sticker shock after seeing the legal costs of their round total into the upper tens of thousands of dollars because their lawyers racked up time trying to plow through term after term that could have been made clearer by the parties up front.

So, what’s more founder friendly: a longer term sheet that sets the deal terms clearly up front and likely saves the founder legal costs, or a shorter (but color!) term sheet that can end up costing far more down the line?

This is mostly a problem for first-time founders raising their first round of capital. I have a sinking feeling that many VCs take advantage of this naiveté to get better terms than they might have gotten otherwise had they actually walked through all the language up front. In later rounds, founders either ask all the right questions about the next round of capital, or their other existing investors figure this out on their behalf.

It’s good legal practice to always get all material terms figured out before your lawyers start writing contracts, whether in fundraising, or customer contracts, or what have you. You can’t always predict if there is something else that will end up being a disagreement, but getting most of the terms squared away will save legal time, and that is money ultimately in your pocket.

Side note: Extra Crunch published part two of five of our comprehensive guide to legal issues facing startups, this time focused on intellectual property. Don’t miss out on part one which focused on corporate issues.

Extra Crunch’s first conference call is today

We are hosting the first conference call for Extra Crunch subscribers today at 2pm EST / 11am PST. Call-in details are being sent out to members by email roughly one hour in advance. Today, Eric Eldon and I will talk briefly about Extra Crunch, and then TechCrunch social and product maestro Josh Constine is going to talk about the strategic issues confronting the social giants. Join us!

More SoftBank Vision Fund sadness

Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Get out your popcorn because there’s more drama involving SoftBank’s giant Vision Fund and its LP base. Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund stated that it no longer planned to invest in the Vision Fund. Despite previous discussions with SoftBank, the fund plans to instead put its money into infrastructure across areas like energy, healthcare, and education.

With assets of roughly $15 billion under management, Bahrain’s fund is small potatoes when it comes to SoftBank, and its contribution likely would have been much smaller than those of its Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia counterparts. However, after recent reports that Persian Gulf LPs are growing frustrated with the Vision Fund and are putting more money to work in infrastructure, Bahrain’s decision could indicate a broader change in sentiment towards the Vision Fund. Just look at the comment the CEO of Bahrain’s Fund gave to Reuters:

“We talked with them and with many people, but it shows we’ve not seen something we think we can add value to or it could add value to us.”

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has wanted to scale up the size of Vision Fund II, but that dream may well be fading as more large wealth managers decline to engage.

Steam and video game streaming

Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Extra Crunch writer Chris Morris had a dive into the challenges facing Steam yesterday. Steam is facing two trends. First, publishers are increasingly getting smart about owning their customer relationship, which is hard to do with the design of Steam’s platform. The second is that video game streaming is getting closer to reality, and that doesn’t bode well for a game store. Plus, developers want to keep more of their revenue, and Steam takes a lot.

What’s interesting here is that publishers (and I mean big, AAA publishers) are increasingly comfortable with the notion that they can attract customers to their own independent store fronts and don’t have to pay the Steam tax in order to get in front of customers. What concerns me is that indie developers both don’t have the leverage to negotiate with Steam and don’t have the marketing budgets or fanbases to reach out to a wide audience. That’s not a great world, and an opportunity I think to figure out how to create a more even playing field for independent game creators.

The chip space keeps getting hotter as Korea’s SK leads round for Chinese chipmaker

IvancoVlad via Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

TechCrunch writer Rita Liao reported overnight that the A.I.-focused Chinese chipmaker Horizon Robotics raised a $600 million round led by subsidiaries of Korea’s SK Group, including its semiconductors segment.

We’ve previously discussed the intensifying global competition in the chip space, and SK’s investment shows that no one wants to miss out on the next innovative technology like previous incumbents who now find themselves playing catch up.

It’s worth noting that Intel’s venture arm, Intel Capital, is also an investor in Horizon and led their previous fundraise, as Horizon seems to offer up another opportunity for the US chip giant to make up lost ground in AI chip innovation and to gain share in the Chinese market now that they have canceled a partnership with China’s state-backed chipmaker Unisoc.

The data point is another positive for Chinese chipmakers, who seem to still have access to foreign capital on top of more than enough domestic — often state-backed — investments. The city of Beijing just raised its first venture fund with $1.5 billion focused on chips, A.I., and other areas, while China is reportedly nearing the closing of its second state-backed semis fund that some estimate might be nearly $50 billion in size.

More news

Written by Arman Tabatabai

California may have canceled HSR, but China is moving forward with an IPO

While US high-speed rail (HSR) projects continue to fall flat on their face, China Railway Corporation is now planning to IPO its Beijing to Shanghai HSR line within the next year. There’s always some financial risk with publicly-traded infrastructure, but the line’s securely profitable and the deal should help shore up the finances of its owner as it plans to make its largest rail investments ever this year.

Japan’s antitrust investigation is the latest in Asia’s new wave of regulatory scrutiny

Japan is reportedly initiating an antitrust investigation into the country’s biggest ecommerce platforms. Investigators will be looking to see whether Amazon Japan, Rakuten and SoftBank-subsidiary Yahoo! Japan launched benefit programs that ultimately are subsidized by and cut into the revenue of its small-to-midsize vendor suppliers.

The investigation is the latest in Japan’s broader effort to increase regulatory scrutiny on big tech, a global trend that seems to be permeating Asia as seen in our previous discussions on India. While it’s unclear how the heightened scrutiny will impact companies’ perception of these markets, it’s certainly clear that the “move fast and break things” playbook is getting tougher to run.

Obsessions

• We have a bit of a theme around emerging markets, macroeconomics, and the next set of users to join the internet.
• More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to danny@techcrunch.com.

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/27/why-longer-term-sheets-are-better/

FedEx’s new autonomous delivery bot has iBot wheelchair DNA

FedEx is a courier delivery and logistics company; and in 2019, that means it must also have an autonomous delivery bot.

The delivery services company, known for its overnight shipping, unveiled Wednesday an autonomous delivery device called SameDayBot. The bot, which will be tested this summer in select markets including FedEx’s hometown Memphis, is being developed in collaboration with DEKA Development & Research Corp. and its founder Dean Kamen, who invented the Segway and iBot wheelchair.

FedEx is working with AutoZone, Lowe’s, Pizza Hut, Target, Walgreens and Walmart to figure out how this whole autonomous bot business might actually function. The idea, FedEx says, is to provide a way for retailers to accept orders from nearby customers and deliver them by bot directly to customers’ homes or businesses the same day.

The initial test will involve deliveries between selected FedEx Office locations, the company said. Ultimately, theFedEx bot will complement the FedEx SameDay City service, which operates in 32 markets and 1,900 cities.

The underlying roots of the SameDay Bot is the iBot, one of Kamen’s inventions. DEKA built upon the power base of the iBot, an FDA-approved mobility device for the disabled population, to develop FedEx’s product. And Kamen clearly sees this partnership with FedEx as another way to help push the iBot forward.

“The bot has unique capabilities that make it unlike other autonomous vehicles,” Kamen said. “We built upon the power base of the iBot, an advanced, FDA-approved, mobility device for the disabled population with more than 10 million hours of reliable, real-world operation. By leveraging this base in an additional application, we hope that the iBot will become even more accessible to those who need it for their own mobility.”

The FedEx bot is equipped with sensing technology such as LiDAR and multiple cameras, which when combined with machine learning algorithms should allow the device to detect and avoid obstacles, plot a safe path, all while following the rules of the road (or sidewalk).

FedEx says the proprietary technology is the secret sauce that makes the bot highly capable and allows it to navigate unpaved surfaces, curbs, and even steps for an extraordinary door-to-door delivery experience. That’s an important feature for businesses and their customers, who might not want or be physically able to fetch a package at the bottom of stairs.

FedEx’s move follows the march of other like-minded logistics and delivery companies such as PostMates and Amazon.

PostMates developed Serve, a new cooler-meet-autonomous-stroller. In January, Amazon took the wraps off its six-wheeled robot Scout. Then there are all the private companies developing autonomous delivery bots, including Nuro, Robby and Starship. 

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/27/fedexs-new-autonomous-delivery-bot-has-ibot-dna/

The first piece of tape

I’m sitting on a black couch in the lobby of a nice theater. The couch is cracked and peeling, with seven strips of black gaffer’s tape holding it together. And you don’t have to be an interior geologist to see that it has developed this patina over time, bit by bit.

The question is: Who was the first person who decided to fix the couch with tape?

The third or fifth person did a natural thing–here’s a ratty couch, let’s keep it the best we can.

But the first taper?

The first taper decided that it was okay for this theater to have a taped couch. The first taper didn’t make the effort to alert the authorities, to insist on getting the couch repaired properly.

The first taper decided, “this is good enough for now.”

This is how we find ourselves on the road to decay.

---

 

Here’s a new video the team just put together for the altMBA. I hope it resonates with you…

PS The early decision deadline for the altMBA is March 1st.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/598990174/0/sethsblog~The-first-piece-of-tape/

FTC brings its first case against fake paid reviews on Amazon

The Federal Trade Commission announced on Tuesday evening that it has brought its first case against using fake reviews to sell products online. The Commission said it will settle with defendant Cure Encapsulations Inc., a New York City-based company, and owner Naftula Jacobwitz, who it accused of making false claims about a weight loss supplement and paying a third-party website to post fake reviews on Amazon.

Fake reviews are a constant nuisance for Amazon shoppers, despite algorithms designed to safeguard its review system, and the company has hit back with a series of lawsuits against websites that offer to post fake verified reviews.

According to the FTC’s complaint, Cure Encapsulations sold pills with garcinia cambogia, a tropical fruit also called brindleberry that is sometimes used as a “natural” weight loss aid. Called Quality Encapsulations Garcinia Cambogia, the pills were sold only on Amazon. Jacobwitz paid a website called www.amazonverifiedreviews.com to post favorable reviews in order to boost its rating.

An exhibit from the FTC’s complaint against Cure Encapsulations Inc.

On October 8, 2014, Jacobowitz sent an email to the site’s operator saying he’d pay a total of $1,000 for 30 reviews, three per day, with the goal of increasing its 4.2 rating to 4.3, which he claimed was necessary in order to have sales. He also wrote that he wanted the product to “stay a five star.” Www.amazonverifiedreviews.com then posted a series of fake five-star reviews praising the pills. The FTC said the reviews made false claims, including that the pills were a powerful appetite suppressant, caused weight loss of up to 20 pounds, and blocked the formation of new fat cells.

The proposed settlement includes a judgement of $12.8 million, to be suspended upon payment of $50,000 to the FTC and certain unpaid income tax obligations. The settlement also bans Cure Encapsulations and Jacobwitz from making weight-loss, fat-blocking, or disease-treatment claims for dietary supplements, food, or drugs, unless they have reliable scientific evidence from clinical trials in humans. They are also prohibited from making misrepresentations about endorsements, including fake reviews, and must tell Amazon which reviews were faked and email customers who have bought the pills to give them information about FTC’s allegations.

In press release, Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said “When a company buys fake reviews to inflate its Amazon ratings, it hurts both shoppers and companies that play by the rules.”

In a statement to The Verge, an Amazon spokesperson said “We welcome the FTC’s work in this area. Amazon invests significant resources to protect the integrity of reviews in our store because we know customers value the insights and experiences shared by fellow shoppers. Even one inauthentic review is one too many. We have clear participation guidelines for both reviewers and selling partners and we suspend, ban, and take legal action on those who violate our policies.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/26/ftc-brings-its-first-case-against-fake-paid-reviews-on-amazon/