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Tuesday, 7 January 2020

Hyundai and Uber show off their flying taxi concept


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Toshiba's latest Dynabook is one of the lightest 13-inch laptops yet


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Xbox Series X's ports make their debut at AMD's CES 2020 event - CNET

AMD may have just revealed the ports on the Xbox Series X.

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Facebook's first CES reveal in years is a privacy tool that falls short - CNET

This is Privacy Checkup's first significant update since Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, bit it doesn't address the core issues lawmakers have had with the social network.

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AMD introduces Ryzen Threadripper 64-core 3990X chip video - CNET

AMD CEO Lisa Su announces the Ryzen Threadripper 64-core chip at CES 2020. It will be available starting Feb. 7, 2020.

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The ASUS TUF FX505 gaming laptop is $300 off - CNET

Walmart is offering this tough, speedy rig with a great display for just $749.

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Batman meets Thor? Christian Bale in talks for Marvel's Thor: Love and Thunder - CNET

The Batman actor could be joining Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman and Tessa Thompson in a new Marvel adventure, according to reports.

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Hyundai partners up with Uber Elevate, debuts air taxi concept S-A1 - Roadshow

Hyundai built a flying car. Okay, not really a car, the Hyundai Urban Air Mobility concept S-A1 is more of an air taxi.

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Check out LG's amazing wave display at its CES booth video - CNET

Lexy Savvides takes a first look tour of LG's booth and its massive wave display.

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Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop debuts 1440p screen, flashy lid at CES 2020 - CNET

The screen we've all been waiting for launches on a new 14-inch model.

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Quadrantid meteor shower looks like pure magic in astronaut's view from ISS - CNET

Shooting stars and an aurora share the spotlight in a stunning image from Christina Koch at the International Space Station.

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Hyundai and Uber Elevate debut urban air taxi concept S-A1 - Roadshow

Where we're going, we don't need roads. Meet the electric Hyundai Urban Air Mobility concept, one of a trio of future city transport concepts debuting at CES 2020.

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Acer Swift 3 has big appeal for people who love little laptops - CNET

With a choice of Intel and a 3:2-aspect display or a 16:9 display with AMD, the Swift 3 could grab a lot of ultraportable buyers.

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Samsung's bezelless 8K QLED TV is basically all screen video - CNET

The design of this TV is more impressive than its resolution.

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Toyota creating living lab to study city of the future video - CNET

Toyota's Woven City will explore human interaction in urban spaces, study smart city infrastructure and driverless cars. It will be ready in 2021.

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Australian fires: Everything we know and how you can help - CNET

Bushfires have been ravaging the country for months, devastating towns, rural communities and livelihoods. Here are the best ways to help.

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CES 2020: Dell's future folding, dual screen, and handheld gaming devices

The PC giant has shown off its Concept UFO, Concept Duet, and Concept Ori devices this week in Las Vegas.

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CES 2020: Would you live in Toyota's Woven City smart city experiment?

If you really want to perfect the smart city you might as well start at the base of Mt. Fuji with a blank slate, 175-acres and the latest technologies such as robotics and AI.

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Study associates frequency, quality of monthly reports with startup success

“Despite a lot of publicity and social media, number of sign-ups were modest,” reads one of the last monthly reports I sent to my VCs before my startup ceased to exist. “After the initial wave, sign-ups have slowed right down to near pre-launch levels. User acquisition is our number-one priority and my biggest headache.”

Like, I suspect, many other early-stage founders, I hated the monthly chore of writing a short report for investors. We used the PPP format (progress, problems and plans) for these regular missives, but progress was almost always slow and most of the time, problems far outstripped plans.

On good months, I was far more motivated to file our monthly report — it is a very human thing to want to deliver good news — and on bad months I had a million other more important things I thought a CEO should be spending their time on.

However, according to a research conducted by Jan Luca Ernst, a masters student at The University of St. Gallen, I may have been misguided. In his thesis, supported by Prof. Dr. Elgar Fleisch (Professor of Technology Management at University of St. Gallen) and Florian Schweitzer (a partner at VC firm btov), he writes “startups that submit regular, high-quality reports are shown by the statistics to be better investments than other startups.”

The research was based on analysis of hundreds of monthly startup reports submitted to btov Partners by portfolio companies out of its first two funds, which ran between 2006 to 2014. Specifically, researchers looked at 64 startups, covering the performance of startups during the first two years after initial investment from the first fund, and the performance during a single year, 2015, for the second fund.

“Hypotheses on the positive effects of monthly startup reports were tested, using several multivariate regressions,” write the paper’s authors. “As a result, several initial assumptions were discarded.”

For example, the punctuality of startup reports did not appear to indicate whether a startup would be more successful. In contrast, the frequency of reporting (at a confidence level of 95%), as well as the quality of the reporting (at a confidence level of 99%), were identified as contributors to success.

“Overall, the findings emphasize the importance of the post-investment phase and the value added by venture capitalists beyond financial support,” say Ernst, Fleisch and Schweitzer. “One main implication of the findings has an impact on subsequent investment rounds. Startups that submit regular, high-quality reports are shown by the statistics to be better investments than other startups. This may be an indicator that justifies further investment, that, in turn, leads to better performance.”

The authors also suggest that, in the future, investors may ask for “full, unfiltered access” to all past reporting of a startup, including evidence on the quality of reports and regularity of submission. “This would increase transparency and therefore eventually lead to better investment decision making,” they write.

With that said, during a call with btov’s Florian Schweitzer, he conceded that correlation doesn’t necessarily mean cause, but argued that there are many softer, and sometimes hidden, positive outcomes from monthly reports — especially when a founder does them honestly and whole heartedly.

Extra Crunch: What should a monthly report contain?

Florian Schweitzer: We always define what we would like or what we think would be sensible, because for each startup, of course, it is different. In general, the idea is that the founders can do the report in half an hour. Usually, it contains something like eight KPIs, and then some bullet points reflecting on what went well, and what are the challenges right now. And those challenges are a superb opportunity to understand where the founder is struggling, and where we can support them. So it can be a very, very productive agenda for a discussion, which we usually have regularity.

I think it is very good that founders sit back and think for half an hour: what happened during the last 30 days? What did I want to achieve? What did I not achieve? And to be honest about the progress and challenges.



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This startup just raised $7 million, led by Google, to authenticate people based on their typing style

TypingDNA, a four-year-old, 18-person startup that was founded in Bucharest, Romania and more recently moved its headquarters to Brooklyn, New York, has closed on $7 million in Series A funding for something interesting: AI-driven technology that it says can recognize people based on the way they type, both on their laptops and mobile devices.

We yesterday discovered an SEC filing that showed the company — which graduated from Techstars NYC in late 2018 and early last year closed on €1.3 million in seed funding — had so far raised $5.25 million toward that goal. We’ve since connected with the company’s co-founder and CEO, Raul Popa, who confirms the entire amount has been raised.

Gradient Ventures, which is Google’s nearly three-year-old, AI-focused venture group, led the round; it was joined by the company’s previous backers, including Techstars Ventures and GapMinder Venture Partners, a venture outfit based in Amsterdam.

Typing biometrics — the detailed timing information that describes exactly when each key is pressed and released as a way to identify the unique person at the keyboard — is apparently not brand new. A two-year-old, PC World article says research in the field dates back 20 years. It also says that inaccuracies have kept the technology from being used as a widespread way to authenticate individuals. TypingDNA meanwhile asserts that the typing pattern recognition technology it has developed has an accuracy rate of between 99% and 99.9%.

According to Popa, TypingDNA is currently working with banks, financial and payment apps, online education platforms, enterprise apps, consumer apps and government apps that are concerned with identity and fraud prevention.

On the education front, for example, it helps organizations ensure they’re giving the right students credit for the work they receive.

Worth noting: its API is open to anyone — especially developers — looking to integrate the technology into their products and apps. In fact, asked how the company will use its new round, Popa says the plan involves “focusing on developers more, coming up with typing biometrics-based products that can easily be integrated to solve various use cases, and helping banks and fintechs where regulation asks for biometrics as a second factor.”

As for what TypingDNA is doing that wasn’t previously possible, Popa says his team doesn’t need a huge body of work to draw conclusions, that they’re “able to look at very short and few samples of text in order to authenticate people with great accuracy.”

The mobile tech, he says, “needs even less data than on desktop, because we also look at other sensors in the device.”

From an AI point of view, TypingDNA is apparently combining pattern recognition, anomaly detection and what Popa calls one-shot learning techniques — some of which are “completely novel,” he says. Indeed, if all goes as planned, it eventually also could be applied to other technologies, as well to improve binary classification quality when few training samples are used.



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Dell Concept UFO, Concept Duet, and Concept Ori are intriguing peeks at future PCs

Dell’s Concept UFO, Concept Duet, and Concept Ori offer a rare peek at future products from the usually tight-lipped PC maker. PCWorld got an advance look at these concepts ahead of their announcement Monday at CES in Las Vegas. 

Because they’re concepts, we don’t know whether they’ll ever make it to market. Think of them instead as hints of what Dell’s working on for future PCs, and who knows—you may see something like it someday at your local electronics store.  

Concept Ori: It folds!

The Concept Ori is a folding PC that looks a lot like the ThinkPad X1 Fold that Lenovo revealed a few hours ago. It’s a single display that folds in the middle, offering options for using it as a display, a tablet, or a clamshell laptop. A small Bluetooth keyboard would likely come with it for maximum versatility.

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How Close Is Iran to a Nuclear Weapon? Here's What We Know

Iran is no longer abiding by many of the restrictions in the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, but that doesn’t mean it’s about to build a bomb, either.

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What's Next In Tech? We Dodged Robots At CES To Find Out

Lovot companion robots by Groove X wander at CES, the consumer electronics show, in Las Vegas.

At the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the gadgets range from big-screen TVs and 5G networks to futuristic health care devices and toilet-paper-toting robots.

(Image credit: Steve Marcus/Reuters)



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