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Wednesday, 26 February 2020

Fujifilm's Instax Mini 11 instant camera is smarter and made for selfies - CNET

This camera has all the control.

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Fujifilm's slimmer Instax Mini 11 features automatic exposure


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NewsGuard Technologies launches Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center

False information about COVID-19 is plaguing the internet. Now NewsGuard wants to stop it.

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Cisco rolls out new cloud software and hardware for mobile networks

The new offerings are aimed at helping service providers get the most out of their 5G infrastructure investments.

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ACCC to look into competition concerns with 26GHz and 28GHz 5G spectrum lots

Watchdog to determine if any limits need to be imposed on upcoming spectrum allocations.

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Slickwraps apologizes to customers after comically bad data breach

Slickwraps, which makes vinyl skins for phones, tablets, and other electronics, announced last week that it suffered a data breach. The announcement came after many customers received an email from Slickwraps that appeared to be sent by a hacker claiming to have stolen customer data.

What’s unusual about this case is how the hacker apparently breached Slickwraps’ systems: not by discovering the vulnerability on their own, but by reading a now-deleted Medium post from an anonymous fellow hacker. The takeaway is that Slickwraps may have had comically bad security, leaving it both wide open to breaches like this and flat-footed when it came to responding to any concerns brought to its attention.

In its blog post, Slickwraps said customer...

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Music Fingers is the newest weird beat-making gadget

Image: Music Fingers

The trend of gadgets that rethink the physical ways we make music is continuing with a little wearable device called Music Fingers. It literally puts music at your fingertips, and lets you tap out beats on any surface.

It’s a clip-like device that’s goes on your finger, and sort of looks like any pulse reader you’d see in a hospital. The clip then connects to the Music Fingers app on your smartphone via Bluetooth, where sounds or loops can be assigned to the clip’s two buttons. Once that’s done, start playing by tapping away.

It’s just one example of a weirdo gadget for making beats — and there have been a lot of attempts at making these kinds of gadgets. There’s Oddball, which is an actual bouncy ball that’s also a drum machine....

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Apple-made Mac chips won't be ready until 2021, report says - CNET

The first Mac chip designed by Apple was previously rumored for 2020.

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All the ways Bob Iger transformed Disney as CEO - CNET

Acquisitions like Pixar and Marvel, and revamping the Disney theme parks, are Iger's legacy as he steps down.

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Schools are tracking kids and that raises all kinds of questions (Daily Charge, 2/25/2020) video - CNET

A look at how schools are using kids' phones for tracking purposes and how Firefox wants to make internet browsing more private.

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VCs bet millions on Microverse, a Lambda School for the developing world

The student loan crisis in the U.S. has left venture capitalists searching for novel approaches to financing higher education, but can the same systems designed for helping coders in Silicon Valley get jobs at Google help underserved students in developing countries become part of a global work force?

Similar to the buzzy San Francisco startup Lambda School, Microverse is a coding school that utilizes ISAs, or Income Share Agreements, as a means of allowing students to learn now and pay later with a fixed percentage of their future salary. Microverse isn’t aiming to compete heavily with Lambda School for U.S. students, however, they are looking more heavily at courting students in developing countries. The startup currently has students in 96 countries, with Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon and India among their most represented, CEO Ariel Camus tells TechCrunch.

The pitch of bringing the ISA model worldwide has attracted investor interest. The startup tells TechCrunch it has just closed $3.2 million in seed funding from venture capitalists including General Catalyst and Y Combinator.

Lambda School and its ilk have excited plenty of investors. There has also been plenty of scrutiny and some questions on whether quickly scaling to venture-sized returns or building revenue by selling off securitized ISAs ends up pushing these startups toward cutting corners.

Microverse, for its part, is already built quite lean. The program has no full-time instructors. The entire curriculum is a self-guided English-only lesson plan that relies on students that are just months ahead in the program serving as “mentors.” Students are expected to spend eight hours per day pushing through the curriculum with assigned study partners and peer groups, graduating in about eight months on average, Camus says.

“The average starting salary for us — it’s of course lower and that’s expected,” said Camus. “The only way we can offer as good or better learning experience as Lambda or any other campus-based education in the U.S. — with salaries that will usually be lower — is if our costs are lower, and that’s why we have designed the entire system to allow us to scale faster. We don’t have to hire teachers, we don’t have to create content and that allows us to adjust to changes in the market and new technologies much much faster.”

While Lambda School’s ISA terms require students to pay 17% of their monthly salary for 24 months once they begin earning above $50,000 annually — up to a maximum of $30,000, Microverse requires that graduates pay 15% of their salary once they begin making more than just $1,000 per month, though there is no cap on time, so students continue payments until they have repaid $15,000 in full. In both startups’ cases, students only repay if they are employed in a field related to what they studied, but with Microverse, ISAs never expire, so if you ever enter a job adjacent to your area of study, you are on the hook for repayments. Lambda School’s ISA taps out after five years of deferred repayments.

Without much of the nuance in how Lambda School or Holberton School have structured their ISA terms, Microverse’s structure seems less amenable, but Camus defends the terms as a necessary means to getting around under-reporting.

“When you use a cap, you’re using a perverse incentive for under-reporting,” Camus says. “In the U.S. where you can enforce tax reviews, there’s no need to worry about that and I think it’s better if you can cap it, but in most of the developing countries where there is not a strong tax system, it isn’t a possibility.”

For students that qualify for terms for repaying this ISA, they are, again, on the hook for $15,000. Charging such a hefty fee for an online course without full-time instructors geared toward students in developing countries could be controversial for a venture-backed startup, but it will also put a heavy burden on the school to keep their students satisfied and help them find employment via its network of career counselors.

The CEO acknowledges the high price of Microverse’s instruction. “It is huge,” but he says that the premium is necessary to build a business around getting students in developing countries careers in the global workforce. Microverse is keeping its total number of admitted students small early on so that it can ensure it’s meeting their needs, Camus says, noting that Microverse accepts just 1% of applicants, adding 70-80 students to the program per month.

“This conversation around the ISA in the U.S. is so hot that you have to frame it in such a different way when you’re talking about students in developing and emerging countries. Like, there are no alternatives,” Camus says. “…if you can find a value proposition that aligns with their goals and gives them some international and professional exposure, that gives them a world-class education… that’s a very compelling proposition.”



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Comcast officially purchases Xumo ad-supported streaming service


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A Safety Board Faults Tesla and Regulators in a Fatal 2018 Crash

The National Transportation Safety Board says the automaker should restrict use of its Autopilot feature and better detect when drivers are paying attention.

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How to use Windows' Your Phone app to connect your phone to your PC

Why does Microsoft think you need the Windows 10 Your Phone app? Because it preserves the most important functions of a phone: access to your photos, messages, notifications, calls, and even your phone’s home screen—without the need to remove your phone from your pocket.

That might sound ridiculous, but think again: Once you pull your phone from your pocket, you’re instantly lost in messages, email, Instagram—all of these distracting from your focus and flow while working on your PC. Theoretically, you could refuse to open Outlook on your PC and use your phone instead. But you don’t, right? Because the PC is much more convenient—and, in certain situations, playing with your phone is also quite rude.

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Scientists accidentally discover first 'animal' that doesn't breathe oxygen - CNET

Every breath you (don't) take.

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How schools are using kids' phones to track and surveil them - CNET

A technology used in a number of prisons is tracking students now too.

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Ford issues recalls for F-150 block heaters, Super Duty and E-Series rear ends - Roadshow

Low differential oil and faulty EcoBoost engine block heaters are causing problems for some Ford owners.

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Sony Vision-S electric car stunned at CES, now in testing on public roads - Roadshow

Nobody saw this slippery EV coming, let alone the Vision-S connected car platform underneath, but people loved it and now it's out in the wild.

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Salesforce grabs Vlocity for $1.33B, a startup with $1B valuation

It’s been a big news day for Salesforce. It announced that Co-CEO Keith Block would be stepping down, and that it had acquired Vlocity for $1.33 billion in an all-cash deal.

It’s no coincidence that Salesforce targeted this startup. It’s a firm that builds six industry-specific CRMs on top of Salesforce — communications, media and entertainment, insurance and financial services, health, energy and utilities and government and nonprofits — and Salesforce Ventures was also an investor. This would appear to have been a deal waiting to happen.

Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials says Salesforce saw this as an important target to keep building the business. “Salesforce has been beefing up their abilities to provide industry specific solutions by cultivating strategic ISV partnerships with companies like Vlocity and Veeva (which is focused on life sciences). But this move signals the importance of making these industry capabilities even more a part of the platform offerings,” Leary told TechCrunch.

Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research also liked the deal for Salesforce. “It’s a great deal. Vlocity gives them the industries platform they need. More importantly, it keeps Google from buying them and [could generate] $10 billion in additional industries revenue growth over next 4 years,” he said.

Vlocity had raised about $163 million on a valuation of around a $1 billion as of its most recent round, a $60 million Series C last March. If $1.33 billion seems a little light, given what Vlocity is providing the company, Wang says it’s because Vlocity needed Salesforce more than the other way around.

“Vlocity on its own doesn’t have as big a future without Salesforce. They have to be together. So Salesforce doesn’t need to buy them. They could keep building out, but it’s better for them to buy them now,” Wang said.

In a blog post on the Vlocity website, founder and CEO David Schmaier put a positive spin on the deal, as you would expect. “Upon the close of the transaction, Vlocity — this wonderful company that we, as a team, have created, built, and grown into a transformational solution for six of the most important industries in the enterprise — will become part of Salesforce,” he wrote.

Per usual, the deal would be predicated on regulatory approval and close some time during Salesforce’s second quarter in fiscal 2021.



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Checkout.com acquires payment optimization startup ProcessOut

Checkout.com, the quiet London-based payment platform, has acquired its first startup, ProcessOut. Checkout.com surprised everyone last year when it announced a gigantic $230 million Series A round. It turns out the payment processing boom is not over yet.

Checkout.com focuses on enterprise clients with customers all around the world. It provides a full-stack payment service, from accepting transactions, processing them and detecting fraud. It helps with reconciliation thanks to an API and a reporting hub.

The startup is particularly efficient when it comes to supporting multiple currencies and payment methods. You can accept payments in more than 150 currencies. Checkout.com supports debit and credit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, as well as local payment methods such as Klarna, iDEAL and Giropay, and e-wallets such as PayPal and Alipay.

ProcessOut is a French startup that realized e-commerce companies have been leaving money on the table by relying on a single payment provider. The company built a smart routing checkout module that works with dozens of payment providers.

When you enter your card number, ProcessOut can select the best payment provider when it comes to fees and acceptance rate. For instance, a local payment provider can be a lot cheaper than Stripe, but transactions get declined a lot more often. The startup can figure out whether a transaction will go through before selecting an obscure payment provider.

The company then shows you dashboards so you can visualize payment data in a single location. You can generate report and match transactions on your bank account with transactions on different payment providers.

That combination of data visualization and smart routing helped them score some big clients, such as Glovo, Veepee, Rakuten.fr and Dashlane. In 2019, ProcessOut tracked 10% of online transactions in France. Transactions representing $20 billion have been analyzed by ProcessOut over the past 12 months.

With today’s acquisition, ProcessOut’s team of 14 employees are joining Checkout.com’s team of 600 employees. Checkout.com isn’t disclosing the terms of the transaction. Checkout.com is getting a ton of insight on different payment providers. It can learn from ProcessOut’s technology to optimize its internal payment workflows, as well.



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Uber, Lyft may create more CO2 emissions than trips they displace


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WooliesX pushes total online sales up more than 31% for Woolworths

But it wasn't enough to help the group avoid the impact of costs associated with salary remediation.

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Fraidycat is a fantastic new app for keeping tabs on your favorite internet gems

Image: Kicks Condor

Keeping up to speed with the galactic firehouse of daily internet detritus that gets blasted at our eyeballs every minute of every day can be a taxing endeavor. It often involves using RSS readers, Twitter lists, YouTube and Twitch channel notifications, and all-too-frequent email inbox refreshing, among dozens of other methods for staying on top of your favorite internet oddities and sifting through all the junk to find them.

Thankfully, something like Fraidycat now exists.

A free, open source tool released late last year and significantly updated just yesterday, Fraidycat works as a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox or as an app for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It bundles together all of your favorite internet stuff into one...

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