Category: Tech news

The city council in Portland, Oregon passed legislation Wednesday that’s widely regarded as the most aggressive municipal ban on facial recognition technology so far.

Through a pair of ordinances, Portland will both prohibit city bureaus from using the controversial technology and stop private companies from employing it in public areas. Oakland, San Francisco and Boston have all banned their governments from using facial recognition tech, but Portland’s ban on corporate uses in public spaces breaks new ground.

The draft ordinance proposing the private ban cites the risk of “biases against Black people, women, and older people” baked into facial recognition systems. Evidence of bias in these systems has been widely observed by researchers and even by the U.S. federal government, in a study published late last year. Known flaws in these systems can lead to false positives with serious consequences, given facial recognition’s law enforcement applications.

City Council Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty linked concerns around high-tech law enforcement tools to ongoing protests in Portland, which have taken place for more than three months. Last month, the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed that it used a small aircraft to surveil crowds near the protest’s epicenter at the Multnomah County Justice Center in downtown Portland.

Hardesty called the decision to ban local law enforcement from employing facial recognition tech “especially important” for the moment Portland now finds itself in.

“No one should have something as private as their face photographed, stored, and sold to third parties for a profit,” Hardesty said. “No one should be unfairly thrust into the criminal justice system because the tech algorithm misidentified an innocent person.”

The ACLU also celebrated Wednesday’s vote as a historic digital privacy win.

“With today’s vote, the community made clear we hold the real power in this city,” ACLU of Oregon Interim Executive Director Jann Carson said. “We will not let Portland turn into a surveillance state where police and corporations alike can track us wherever we go.”

Portland’s dual bans on the public and private use of facial recognition may serve as a roadmap for other cities looking to carve out similar digital privacy policies — an outcome privacy advocates are hoping for.

“Now, cities across the country must look to Portland and pass bans of their own,” Fight for the Future’s Lia Holland said. “We have the momentum, and we have the will to beat back this dangerous and discriminatory technology.”

Even as more than 150 million people are using digital payment apps each month in India, only about 20 million of them invest in mutual funds and stocks. A startup that is attempting to change that by courting millennials has just received a big backing.

Bangalore-headquartered Groww said on Thursday it had raised $30 million in its Series C financing round. YC Continuity, the growth-stage investment fund of Y Combinator, led the round, while existing investors Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital and Propel Ventures participated in it. The new round brings three-year-old startup Groww’s total raise-to-date to $59 million.

Groww allows users to invest in mutual funds, including systematic investment planning (SIP) and equity-linked savings. The app maintains a very simplified user interface to make it easier for its largely millennial customer base to comprehend the investment world. It offers every fund that is currently available in India.

In recent months, the startup has expanded its offerings to allow users to buy stocks of Indian firms and digital gold, said Lalit Keshre, co-founder and chief executive of Groww, in an interview with TechCrunch. Keshre and other three co-founders of Groww worked at Flipkart before launching their own startup.

Groww has amassed over 8 million registered users for its mutual fund offering, and over 200,000 users have bought stocks from the platform, said Keshre. The new fund will allow Groww to further expand its reach in the country and also introduce new products, he said.

One of those products is the ability to allow users to buy stocks of U.S.-listed firms and derivatives, he said. The startup is already testing this with select users, he said.

“We believe Groww is building the largest retail brokerage in India. At YC, we have known the founders since the company was just an idea and they are some of the best product people you will meet anywhere in the world. We are grateful to be partners with Groww as they build one of the largest retail financial platforms in the world,” said Anu Hariharan, partner at YC Continuity, in a statement.

More than 60% of Groww users come from smaller cities and towns of India and 60% of these have never made such investments before, said Keshre. The startup is conducting workshops in several small cities to educate people about the investment world. And that’s where the growth opportunities lie.

“India is seeing increased participation of retail investors in financial markets — with 2 million new stock market investors added in the last quarter alone,” said Ashish Agrawal, principal at Sequoia Capital India, in a statement.

Scores of startups such as Zerodha, INDWealth and Cube Wealth have emerged and expanded in India in recent years to offer wealth management platforms to the country’s growing internet population. Many established financial firms such as Paytm have also expanded their offerings to include investments in mutual funds. Amazon, which has aggressively expanded its financial services catalog in India in recent months, also sells digital gold in the country.

Lucid just launched its first production vehicle, and it looks impressive. But let’s talk about the new website, too. It features a remarkable buying experience that lets shoppers build a 3D car online and experience it in VR at a Lucid dealership.

Right now, minutes after its launch, the site is laggy at times. I expect it will improve.

Using the tool is just like building a character in a video game. Select a model, add some color and spin the model around to get another look. Don’t like how the black looks? Change it to red, and the image updates in place. Zoom in, zoom out and change the wheels. The image updates as you go.

Video games have had this feature for years. This isn’t a new concept. And some automakers have similar features that allow shoppers to change colors and trim pieces, but none I’ve seen have gone nearly as far as Lucid. Mercedes-Benz’s online shopping tool might be the closest, but it lacks the 3D range of view found on Lucid’s tool.

Once the customer customizes a vehicle to their liking, they can save the file to their Lucid profile and go to a Lucid showroom to experience it in VR. These showrooms — Lucid expects to build 20 in the United States — will have a display with Lucid seats and VR headsets. Lucid employees will load the customer’s saved vehicle into the VR system, and the shopper will be able to experience the car before it’s built.

This tool seems purpose-built for the COVID-19 age. It gives shoppers significantly more insight into a vehicle before going to the dealership. And then, when at the dealership, shoppers can experience the car without getting in a car.

For Lucid, this experience is dramatically more immersive than what Tesla offers shoppers.

General Keith Alexander, who oversaw the National Security Agency when Edward Snowden revealed the shocking extent of its illegal wiretapping and data collection programs, has joined Amazon’s board as a director.

Gen. Alexander’s duties on the audit committee and anywhere else he might be needed are not spelled out anywhere. He is currently co-CEO of IronNet Security, the firm he founded six years ago. Before that he was head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.

He is perhaps best remembered by the general public as having helped build and operate an enormous set of secret programs for domestic surveillance in the security-first post-9/11 era. There’s a bit more to running the country’s cybersecurity infrastructure than that, of course, but the Snowden leaks ended up defining the end of his career in government intelligence.

Amazon itself has faced accusations of surveilling and profiling its own users via network of Alexa-powered devices (and internet infrastructure, and buying habits, and emotion-monitoring smartwatches), and while it may get a few tips from the more experienced Gen. Alexander, it is more likely his expertise and connections within the wide world of intelligence and military matters that the company seeks.

That sort of thing is helpful when trying to make lucrative deals with the feds, something of a sore spot with Amazon since it lost the excruciatingly drawn-out bid process for the $10 billion JEDI contract to Microsoft. (The award is still being challenged.)

Gen. Alexander will join former and current executives from the likes of Pepsico, Starbucks, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bridgewater Associates, and others on the board director rolls.

I’ve reached out to Amazon for further information and comment and will update this post if I hear back.

Update: Amazon directed me to its official SEC filing for more info, but wanted to emphasize that “There are strict conflict of interest rules for government contracting that we will continue to follow.” In other words, he’s not getting them in the door anywhere — though doubtless his CV will prove invaluable in other ways.

TechCrunch interviewed the General on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt not too long ago to find out how he perceives the need to balance security and privacy.

After years of development, Lucid Motors took the wraps off the Air, an electric luxury sedan that was unveiled Wednesday in a live-streamed event.

The Air combines high-end features with eye-popping performance specs and technology that puts it in the same luxury category as a Mercedes S Class. The Air will range in price from as high as $169,000 for its flagship Dream variant to just below $80,000 for the base model, not counting the $7,500 federal tax credit.

The vehicle will have four variants in all, each with slightly different battery ranges that fall between 517 miles and about 400 miles. The Air will be loaded with 32 sensors, a driver-monitoring system and an Ethernet-based architecture all for its advanced driver assistance system, which is designed to support hands-free driving on highways.

Inside the Air is a simple — not stark — design that balances technology and the needs of the driver. A 34-inch curved glass 5K display sits in front of the driver, and appears to float above the dashboard. Another center touchscreen is retractable. Meanwhile, a few physical controls remain on the steering wheel and just above the center screen.

The Air’s design comes across as precise and thoughtful, not jammed with buttons, touchscreens and toggles. TechCrunch hasn’t been inside the production version of the vehicle just yet, but we have loads of photos to share. Check out the inside and exterior of the Air below.

Lucid Motors provided Wednesday a peek of the next vehicle in its all-electric lineup — an SUV called the Lucid Gravity.

The Lucid Gravity follows the Air, a luxury all-electric sedan that was revealed Wednesday in a live streamed event. The Gravity, which will have the same underlying vehicle platform as the Air, is already well into the design process. The company has a working prototype, which was spotted this summer out in the wild. Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson later confirmed the SUV’s existence. This is the first time the company has publicly shared photos of the SUV.

Not much is known about the SUV, although the photos released Wednesday provide a few hints of what is to come.

The Air and Gravity share a few design features, notably the outline of the trunk and single long taillight, features that Lucid’s vice president of design Derek Jenkins told TechCrunch in a recent interview would show up in future vehicles.

“The opening of the trunk is on sides of the vehicle and so that allows this super clean rear end, and a single piece taillight, which I think is very distinctive,” said Jenkins describing the Air. At the time, Jenkins noted that future vehicles would likely have same the long light blade that can be seen on the Air. Photos of the SUV don’t show the front, leaving that feature a mystery for now.

The photos also show a rooftop storage unit, suggesting that Lucid is creating a line up of accessories to go with its electric vehicles.

While Lucid hasn’t disclosed when the SUV would come to market, Rawlinson has said the company’s next vehicle would go into production in 2023.

Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson had a clear vision for how to take an electric car to another level. The former chief engineer of the Tesla Model S just didn’t expect it to take quite so long.

Today, nearly four years since the company first announced its intentions to produce electric vehicles, Lucid Motors revealed the final version of its all-electric luxury Air sedan. The Air has eye-popping performance specs, an estimated range of up to 517 miles and a design that manages to balance technology and luxury without feeling opulent or cluttered.

Two of the four variants — the $169,000 flagship Dream edition and a $139,000 Grand Touring model — will go into production first at its new factory in Casa Grande, Arizona this year. Deliveries of these variants are slated to begin in spring 2021. Two other variants, a Touring model priced at $95,000 and a base model that’s a smidge below $80,000, are expected at the end of 2021 and into 2022, respectively. (All prices are before the $7,500 federal tax credit is accounted for.)

The Air is meant to be an EV replacement to the Mercedes S Class — an electric vehicle category that Rawlinson says has not existed until now.

“Tesla (Model S) is premium, it’s beautifully engineered and it’s super disruptive, but it is not an S Class Mercedes replacement in the EV space and that’s what we’re offering,” Rawlinson said in a recent interview ahead of the September 9 reveal.

The Air is dripping with luxury in an understated way. It’s spacious inside the cabin, the result of what Rawlinson and VP of design Derek Jenkins have described as a clean sheet approach. The company has “redefined the three-dimensional puzzle that is a car through the miniaturization of electric powertrain and that’s making the space concept work, where the car is more compact on the outside, and bigger on the inside,” Rawlinson said, who added that it’s shorter and narrower than the Tesla Model S or the Porsche Taycan.

The vehicle’s four variants offer a variety of performance levels all via its dual-motor, all-wheel drive architecture. The Dream edition boasts 1,080 horsepower and can travel from zero to 60 mph acceleration in 2.5 seconds. As a result of the power, the Dream edition has 465 miles of range. Meanwhile, the Grand Touring has 800 horsepower and can hit that same acceleration in 3 seconds, but has the highest range of 517 miles.

The Air will be loaded with 32 sensors, a driver-monitoring system and an Ethernet-based architecture all for its advanced driver assistance system, which is designed to support hands-free driving on highways.

Inside, a 34-inch curved glass 5K display sits in front of the driver, and appears to float above the dashboard. Another center touchscreen is retractable, revealing more storage. Meanwhile, a few physical controls remain on the steering wheel and just above the center screen to control volume and activate the ADAS and Amazon Alexa, which is integrated into the vehicle. Below that center touchscreen and moving to the console is a spot for inductive charging, cup holders and USB-C ports, along with additional storage.

Owners of the Air will have an app that will control and communicate with the car, such as locking and unlocking the vehicle. But it will also be equipped with facial recognition that confirms the identity of the owner.

Epic journey

It’s been an epic journey for the company that started in 2007 with a different name and mission. Lucid began as Atieva, a company founded by former Tesla VP and board member Bernard Tse and entrepreneur Sam Weng that focused on developing electric car battery technology. That early work would be critically important for the Lucid Motors of today because of the early research, development and eventual progress in the components and overall electric architecture, Rawlinson told TechCrunch. Atieva would go on to become the battery supplier to Formula E, which would also help the company make gains on the design and performance.

But it was in the waning months of 2016 that Lucid came out with a bang and a new publicly stated purpose to make electric vehicles (although the company had already been working quietly at this for a couple of years). Rawlinson, who left Tesla to join Lucid in 2013 as CTO, was one of the driving forces behind this new mission. He later took on the CEO title and responsibility as well. In those early days, Lucid looked well on its way to the difficult and expensive task of becoming a car manufacturer.

“Who would be crazy enough to start a car company?” Rawlinson told TechCrunch recently. “We came out in early 2017 with high hopes and it took us longer to find the right investor.”

That is a slight understatement. Soon after the name change, Lucid announced it would build a factory in Arizona and showed off an alpha prototype of the Air (in which I rode in late 2017). But then progress on capturing investors slowed and then stalled altogether.

“At that stage, I think the investment community was in love with the idea of autonomous driving and robotaxis,” Rawlinson said. “No one believed there was still some mileage to getting a better electric car. And I kept plugging that it hasn’t been done yet. Tesla’s doing a great job, but they haven’t really cracked it, there’s so much more that can come out of the electric car — and it fell on deaf ears.”

It would take months to land an investor, putting the factory project in limbo. “Those were our darkest hours as a company,” Rawlinson recalled.

In September 2018, Lucid announced that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund had committed to invest $1 billion into the company. The  announcement came just six weeks after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share and had secured the proper funding to make the leap. Musk suggested that Saudi’s wealth fund, which already owns almost 5% of Tesla stock, was interested in backing the company’s move from public to private.

The $1 billion investment deal between Lucid and the Saudi wealth fund closed in spring 2019. The funding was used to complete engineering development and testing of the Lucid Air, construct its factory in Arizona, begin the global rollout of its retail strategy starting in North America and enter production.

With the Air finally on display, Lucid now must turn its attention to the next task — production and delivery rollout.

A massive content recommendation merger falls apart, Microsoft reveals the release date and pricing for its flagship game console and Alexa enables phone calls for AT&T customers. This is your Daily Crunch for September 9, 2020.

The big story: Taboola and Outbrain call off their merger

Looks like the two biggest companies in the content recommendation market won’t be teaming up after all.

Taboola and Outbrain announced an $850 million merger last year, but apparently a “challenging cultural fit” and the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the digital ad business have scuttled the deal. There’s been no formal announcement yet, but TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden has confirmed the news with both companies.

“We’ve seen changing conditions in the market due to COVID-19, and we decided to terminate the deal,” an anonymous source told us.

The tech giants

Microsoft confirms $499 Xbox Series X arrives November 10, pre-orders begin September 22 — We mentioned a new, scaled-down Xbox yesterday, but Microsoft announced today that the flagship Xbox Series X is arriving on November 10.

AT&T customers can now make and receive calls via Alexa — Once enabled, customers with supported devices will be able to speak to the Alexa digital assistant to start a phone call or answer an incoming call.

Snapchat’s new Lens celebrates tomorrow’s NFL kickoff — Snap and the NFL recently announced a multi-year extension to their content partnership.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Yubico unveils its latest YubiKey 5C NFC security key, priced at $55 — The company says this new security key offers the strongest defenses against some of the most common cyberattacks.

Xometry raises $75M Series E to expand custom manufacturing marketplace — The company has built an online marketplace where businesses can find manufacturers across the world with excess capacity to build whatever they need.

Rick Moranis breaks acting hiatus for 30 seconds to launch Mint’s $30 a month unlimited plan — Why? Who knows!

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

As direct listing looms, Palantir insiders are accelerating stock sales — Danny Crichton examines how insiders perceive Palantir’s value.

Shift’s George Arison shares 6 tips for taking your company public via a SPAC — Shift has nearly completed the SPAC process.

Slack’s earnings detail how COVID-19 is both a help and a hindrance to cloud growth — Alex Wilhelm looks at Slack’s latest numbers.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Watch the first trailer for the insanely star-studded ‘Dune’ — Sandworms, ahoy!

Learn how to build a service marketplace from the CTOs of Peloton and DoorDash at Disrupt — The connected fitness platform and food delivery app have both built massive service businesses that touch millions of consumers.

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 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Instagram announced some changes it’s making that are geared toward advancing equity within its workplace. The changes come after Instagram in June spoke about elevating, rather than suppressing, Black voices in light of the killing of George Floyd.

“More than ever, people are turning to the platform to raise awareness for the racial, civic, and social causes they care about,” Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, wrote in a blog post. “It’s a big part of why we committed in June to review the ways Instagram could be underserving certain groups of people. We have a responsibility to look at what we build and how we build, so that people’s experiences with our product better mirrors the actions and aspirations of our community.”

For starters, the Facebook-owned company has created an Equity team to work on “better understanding and addressing bias in our product development” the experiences people have on Instagram, Mosseri wrote. Part of the responsibilities of that team include creating fair and equitable products, as well as ensuring algorithmic fairness. According to a job posting for an equity and inclusion product manager, the team will be fully focused on equity and inclusion, and “creating the most equitable experience for our global communities.”

Instagram is also looking to hire its own diversity lead. According to the job posting, the director of diversity and inclusion will be responsible for increasing and retaining people from diverse backgrounds, among other things. Facebook has had a head of diversity in place since 2013, but given how big of a company Facebook has become, it seems worthwhile to have a diversity leader specifically focused on Instagram.

Instagram says it has also updated its policies around implicit hate speech, such as depictions of blackface or stereotypes about Jewish people. Instagram says it will also now disable accounts that make serious rape threats, instead of just removing the content.

On the verification front, Instagram has also expanded its criteria to include more Black, LGBTQ+ and Latinx media. Instagram has also stopped automatically prioritizing verification for accounts with high followings.

Metadata.io announced today that it has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding.

It’s been more than four years since I wrote about the startup’s $2 million seed funding. At the time, co-founder and CEO Gil Allouche described the product as helping business-to-business marketers target their ads as people who resemble their existing sales leads.

Since then, the company has launched its product in general availability, and Allouche told me yesterday that it’s become “really the middleware for the sales and marketing stack.”

“It doesn’t just … give you insights, it skips the human as the bottleneck of execution for marketing [operations],” Allouche said, adding that this makes marketing teams more efficient while also eliminating much of the drudgery. “If you’re a Don Draper who’s really good at creative or content, you should spend your time on that and not in an Excel spreadsheet.”

At the same time, ad targeting remains a key part of the company’s capabilities. For example, its new product MetaMatch allows advertisers to build and target custom audiences on Facebook, LinkedIn and programmatic display.

Allouche also said that demand has increased “quite significantly” since the beginning of the pandemic. That’s counter to larger digital ad trends, but he noted that B2B companies still need to reach customers, and many of the old tools — like in-person events — are now off the table.

In addition, he said that Metadata’s proprietary database of 1.4 billion customer profiles have given it an additional advantage in the face of privacy regulation and ad-tracking restrictions.

The platform has been used by companies including Zoom, Drift, Pendo, Udacity, and Vonage.

The new funding was led by Resolute Ventures, with participation from Greycroft, York IE, Stormbreakers, Eloqua founder Mark Organ, Segment founder Ilya Volodarsky and others.

“Metadata isn’t another marketing technology,” Organ said in a statement. “From the origin of the company transforming marketing operations by eliminating tedious manual work, to today, creating a category that transcends demand gen, it is enabling the autonomous marketer to be a reality. It is the marketer that’s needed for the future.”

Ireland’s data protection watchdog, the DPC, has sent Facebook a preliminary order to suspend data transfers from the EU to the US, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter and including a confirmation from Facebook’s VP of global affairs, Nick Clegg.

The preliminary suspension order follows a landmark ruling by Europe’s top court this summer which both struck down a flagship data transfer arrangement between the EU and the US and cast doubt on the legality of an alternative transfer mechanism (aka SCCs) — certainly in cases where data is flowing to a non-EU entity that falls under US surveillance law. 

Facebook’s use of Standard Contractual Clauses to claim a legal basis for EU data transfers therefore looks to be fast running out of borrowed time.

European privacy campaigner Max Schrems, whose surname is colloquially attached to the CJEU ruling (aka Schrems II) — and to an earlier ruling which invalidated the prior EU-US data transfer deal, Safe Harbor, on the same grounds of US surveillance overreach — filed his original complaint about Facebook’s use of SCCs all the way back in 2013. So the tech giant has had more than half a decade to get its European data ducks in order.

Reached for comment on the WSJ report, Facebook pointed us to a freshly published blog post, also penned by Clegg — who acknowledges “significant uncertainty” for businesses operating online services that rely on transatlantic data flows in the wake of the Schrems II ruling.

In the blog post the former deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom goes on to advocate for “global rules that can ensure consistent treatment of data around the world”.

“The Irish Data Protection Commission has commenced an inquiry into Facebook controlled EU-US data transfers, and has suggested that SCCs cannot in practice be used for EU-US data transfers,” Cleggs writes. “While this approach is subject to further process, if followed, it could have a far reaching effect on businesses that rely on SCCs and on the online services many people and businesses rely on.”

Facebook’s blog post lobbying for global rules to ensure “stability” for cross-border data transfers paints a picture of how the Schrems II ruling might negatively affect European startups — claiming it could result in local businesses being unable to use US-based cloud providers or run operations across multiple time zones.

The blog post doesn’t have anything much to say on how Facebook itself having to stop using SCCs might affect Facebook’s own business — but we’ve discussed that before here. (The short version is Facebook may need to split its infrastructure in two, and offer a federated version of its service to EU users — which would clearly be expensive and time consuming for Facebook.)

“Businesses need clear, global rules, underpinned by the strong rule of law, to protect transatlantic data flows over the long term,” Clegg goes on, before lobbying for regulatory leniency in the meanwhile, as Facebook continues to transfer EU data to the US in what he claims is “good faith” — despite the acknowledged legal uncertainty and the complaint in question dating back well over half a decade at this point.

Here he is pleading for data transfer mercy on behalf of other businesses who are not involved in this specific complaint: “While policymakers are working towards a sustainable, long-term solution, we urge regulators to adopt a proportionate and pragmatic approach to minimise disruption to the many thousands of businesses who, like Facebook, have been relying on these mechanisms in good faith to transfer data in a safe and secure way.”

EU lawmakers warned recently that there would be no quick fix for US data transfers, despite some parallel Commission noises about working with the US on an enhanced replacement mechanism for the now defunct ‘Privacy Shield’. (Although for businesses that aren’t, as Facebook is, subject to FISA 702 there may be ways to use SCCs for US transfers that are legal, or at least law firms willing to suggest measures you could take… )

Speaking to the EU Parliament last week, justice commissioner Didier Reynders suggested changes to US surveillance law will be needed to bridge the legal schism between US surveillance law and EU privacy rights.

And of course legislative changes require both time and political will. Although it’s interesting to see Facebook’s global VP feeling moved to wade in and call for global solutions for cross-border data transfers. Perhaps the tech giant will funnel some of its multi-million dollar domestic lobbying budget on making the case for reforming US surveillance law in future.

Ireland’s data protection regulator declined to comment on the WSJ report when we got in touch.

Schrems, meanwhile, is not sitting on his hands. In a statement following the newspaper’s report he said his digital rights not-for-profit, noyb, was not informed about the preliminary order by the DPC — speculating the information was leaked to the newspaper by Facebook to draw political attention to its cause.

He also reveals an intent by noyb to start a legal procedure against the DPC, saying it informed Ireland’s regulator this week that it plans to file an interlocutory injunction over the opening a ‘second’ procedure into the matter — arguing this move is in breach of a 2015 court order and is essentially the equivalent of letting Facebook carry on a multi-year game of legal whack-a-mole where it never actually faces enforcement for breaking each specific law.

“Facebook is knowingly in violation of the law since 2013. So far the DPC has covered them and for seven years refused to enforce the law. It seems after the second judgement by the Court of Justice not even the DPC can deny that Facebook’s international data transfers are built on sand,” Schrems told TechCrunch.

“At the same time, Facebook has in internal communication indicated that it has again shifted its legal basis from the SCCs to [the GDPR] Article 49 and the contract they allegedly sign with users. We are therefore very concerned that the DPC is again only investigating one of two legal basis that Facebook uses. This approach could lead to another frustrated case, like the ‘Safe Harbor’ case in 2015.”

What’s new since 2015 is Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — which came into application in May 2018 and has led EU lawmakers to claim standard-setting geopolitical glory, as the issue of data privacy has risen up the agenda around the world, propelled by the deforming effects of platform power on societies and democracies.

However the two-year-old framework has so far failed to deliver anything much at all on major cross-border complaints which pertain to platform giants like Facebook (or indeed to the adtech industry). This summer a Commission review of the regulation highlighted what it described as a lack of uniformly vigorous enforcement.

Ireland’s DPC is fully in the spotlight on this front too, as the lead regulator for a large number of US tech firms.

It finally submitted the first draft decision on a cross border complaint earlier this summer — but a final decision on that case (relating to a Twitter security breach) has been delayed as the draft failed to gain the backing of all the region’s data supervisors, triggering further procedures related to joint working under the GDPR’s one-stop-shop mechanism.

Any order from the DPC to Facebook to suspend SCCs would similarly need to gain the backing of the bloc’s other regulators (or at least a majority of them). Per the WSJ’s report, Ireland’s regulator has given Facebook until mid-September to respond to the order — after which a new draft would be sent to the other supervisors for joint approval.

So there’s further delay built into the GDPR process before any final suspension order could be issued against Facebook in this seven year+ case. Move fast and break things this most certainly is not.

The WSJ also speculates that Facebook could try to challenge such an order in court. “Internally, Facebook considers the preliminary order and its future implications a big deal,” it adds, citing one of its unnamed sources.

Google Maps has had a sort of spotty relationship with the Apple Watch over the years.

Google first shipped a Watch-friendly build of Maps back in September of 2015, just months after the Apple Watch first hit the shelves. In 2017, however, Google nixed Map’s Watch support with little more than a suggestion that it’d be back… eventually. Google didn’t offer up much of a reason as to why it was being pulled, nor did they suggest how long it might take to return.

Turns out the answer is three years. As of this morning, as spotted by 9to5Google, Google Maps is back on the Apple Watch.

We first found out about Google Maps’ pending return to the Apple Watch back in August alongside an announcement of deeper CarPlay integration. At the time, Google said it should show up within the “coming weeks.”

As Frederic noted at the time, even this second iteration might not be as feature-packed as Google Maps regulars might be hoping for. It’ll help you get from your current location to a handful of preset destinations (like home or work)… but if you want to go somewhere new, you’ll have to start the process on your phone first.

If you’ve already got Google Maps on your phone, updating the app should bring it back to your wrist.

Monthly financing isn’t an entirely new concept in the world of Xbox. Microsoft offered a similar plan for the Xbox One S a few years ago. The idea is pretty simple: pay a monthly fee for hardware and software for two years until you outright own the device. What’s new here, however, is that the company is introducing the plan for its brand new consoles due out later this year.

Along with its Series S announcement, Microsoft detailed two new plans designed to get the consoles in the hands of those unwilling or unable to shell out $299 or $499 for a new system up front. It’s a move that greatly expands the accessibility of the system, even beyond the recent announcement of the low-cost model.

The move is in line with a recent rekindled interest in a hardware as a service model. We’ve seen a number of companies like Zoom embrace this to varying degrees. Though really, the rent to own model shares a lot with smartphone contracts — even as those have begun to fall out of favor in the U.S. to some degree in recent years.

Here, $25 a month will get a Series S console, bundled with Game Pass Ultimate. For $35 a month, meanwhile, you get Game Pass Ultimate plus the Series X. There’s nothing to pay up front. Given how central the Game Pass streaming service is to the next-gen console, it’s a pretty solid deal. After all, Game Pass Ultimate will run you $15 a month without hardware access thrown in.

With estimates around PlayStation 5 pricing ranging from around $450-$550, Sony’s got a tough act to follow in terms of aggressive pricing. Even though the PS5 has arguably drummed up considerably more excitement thus far than the next generation Xbox, a $25/month entry point is tough to compete with.

A new startup called Kinspire wants to make it easier for parents to find activities to help keep kids occupied — away from a screen. The app, which launches with hundreds of activities vetted by parents and teachers alike, arrives at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has many families continuing to engage in social distancing, cutting kids off from regular playdates and other activities. Meanwhile, millions of schoolchildren are now spending long hours online, engaged in distance learning activities.

For parents, this rapid and dramatic increase in screen time has many looking for alternative ways to keep kids occupied and entertained, preferably offline.

“We needed Kinspire in our lives as parents, so we built it,” explains Rob Seigel, PhD, a father of two and Kinspire’s CEO and co-founder. “Before Kinspire, I found it stressful having to search for an activity on websites and social media, then pitch it to my kids. Inevitably after all that work, they’d say no. Kinspire is the one-stop shop where kids can choose what they want to do, not what looks fun to dad,” he says.

He also wanted the app to offer the convenience of having the instructions and the materials together in one place. When quarantine started in the U.S., Seigel put a team together and built it.

At launch, Kinspire features over 350 screen-free activities, including project-based STEAM activities from Tinkerclass, via NPR’s “Wow in the World” — a kids’ podcast designed to encourage kids to think and “tinker” with ordinary household items. None of this content, at present, is paid, we’re told.

The Kinspire community will source the activities going forward by using the app’s “add activity” feature, after first creating their profile. Seigel says the team moderates the content through a combination of an A.I. moderation service and human review.

When you first open the Kinspire app, you’ll see a vertical feed of images, similar to Instagram. But instead of artsy photos or memes, kids and parents can scroll through the activity suggestions to find something fun to do. Each activity card will feature a photo taken by the Kinspire community, which includes teachers, activity creators, as well as parents and caregivers.

Some of the initial creators participating in Kinspire include Nicole Roccaro of @naturallycuriouschildren, Kari McManamon of @entertainmytoddler, Viviana Maldonado of @makethingsbox_, and Kira Silvera of @totsonlock.

Parents can also filter the suggested activities by age, whether it’s designed for indoors or outdoors, prep time, how much parental involvement is needed, activity type, materials needed, and even the mess level involved. (Now that sounds like a parent built this!)

You can also save favorite activities you may want to try later.

As kids complete the activities in Kinspire, they earn in-app rewards as they accomplish things like doing a creative or scientific project, a nature exploration, engaging in pretend play, practicing cooking, math, music, mindfulness and more. Some of the in-app rewards turn into digital character badges for profiles. Rewards also deliver printable instructions to help kids build origami characters with paper from home.

The app could help homeschoolers, remote learners, and any other families who are struggling to come up with new ideas for kids after exhausting so many during the early days of the pandemic.

The company plans to generate revenue by adding a premium subscription that will allow parents to subscribe to individual content creators to receive exclusive, additional content within Kinspire. This also lets Kinspire’s creative content partners monetize, as they share in that revenue.

Kinspire is also working on shoppable activities, a top user request during testing. This lets parents easily purchase all the necessary materials for an activity directly in the Kinspire app, instead of having to go to Amazon or another store. Kinspire would take a commission on those purchases.

Denver and New York-based Kinspire was founded in May 2020, during the pandemic, by a team with backgrounds in tech and children’s play experiences.

Sara Berliner is on the founding team and is an advisor at YC-backed Hellosaurus, a new interactive video platform and creator tool. Before Kinspire, she co-founded children’s IP studio Star Farm (2002-2008), started and built the Kids & Family group at ScrollMotion, now Ingage (2008-2012), and was Chief Strategy Officer at Night & Day Studios, home of Peekaboo Barn, from 2012-2018. She’s also a mother of two.

Kinspire’s other co-founders Rob Seigel, Dave Tarasi, and Nate Ruiz, meanwhile, have a combined twenty years of experience at startups like HeadsUp, Nodin, SolidFire, and NetApp. CEO Seigel was previously co-Founder and CEO of HeadsUp, CTO at Nodin, and a software engineer at SolidFire/NetApp, in addition to being a father of two boys.

The startup is currently bootstrapped and raising a seed round.

The Kinspire app is a free download on iOS and Android in the U.S. and Canada.

Bay Area-based Iron Ox today announced a $20 million Series B. The funding, led by Pathbreaker Venture and family office firms, brings the robotics company’s total funding up to $45 million to date. A number of other investors also took part in the round, including Crosslink Capital, Amplify Partners, ENIAC Ventures, R7 Partners, Tuesday Ventures, At One Ventures and Y Combinator.

Founded in 2015, Iron Ox has become one of the more prominent names in the world of agricultural robotics. In 2018, the company announced its first indoor farm, growing a slew of leafy green vegetables in hydroponic boxes.

Today they announced the addition of a Gilroy, California-based farm with 10,000 square feet of growing area. The location has already begun delivering vegetables to a number of retailers and restaurants across the state, including some big names like Whole Foods and smaller operations like Bianchini’s Market, which operates two locations in California. Today’s plans entail a nation-wide expansion in delivery for next year.

“We have made it our mission to address food security by developing autonomous greenhouses that grow a variety of local and consistently delicious food for everyone,” co-founder and CEO Brandon Alexander said in a release. “Today, we’re thrilled to announce the successful operation of our Gilroy farm as well as our consumer brand, and our plans to complete additional sunlight-enabled, out-of-state facilities in 2021.”

The appeal of robotic farming is pretty straightforward, addressing labor shortages and supply chain issues. In the era of COVID-19, some of those problems have become even more pressing, with additional concerns surrounding the potential for transmission. It’s no surprise, then, that the company was able to nearly double previous raises in an era when investors are eyeing any and all robotics and automation.

That the company has a proven model makes things all the more appealing.