Category: Tech news

A Tesla Model S was in Autopilot mode — the company’s advanced driver assistance system — when it crashed into a fire truck in Southern California last year, according to a preliminary report released Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Reuters was the first to report on the contents of the public documents. A final accident brief, including NTSB’s determination of probable cause, is scheduled to be published Wednesday.

The crash, involving a 2014 Tesla Model S, occurred January 22, 2018 in Culver City, Calif. The Tesla had Autopilot engaged for nearly 14 minutes when it struck a fire truck that was parked on Interstate 405. The driver was not injured in the crash and the fire truck was unoccupied.

Tesla has not commented on the report. TechCrunch will update if the company provides a statement.

The report found that the driver’s hands were not on the wheel for the vast majority of that time despite receiving numerous alerts. Autopilot was engaged in the final 13 minutes and 48 seconds of the trip and the system detected driver-applied steering wheel torque for only 51 seconds of that time, the NTSB said. Other findings include:

• The system presented a visual alert regarding hands-off operation of the Autopilot on four separate occasions.
• The system presented a first-level auditory warning on one occasion; it occurred following the first visual alert.
• The longest period during which the system did not detect driver-applied steering wheel torque was 3 minutes and 41 seconds.

In the 2018 crash into a fire truck, the vehicle was operating a “Hardware Version 1” and a firmware version that had been installed via an over-the-air software update on December 28, 2017. The technology provided a number of convenience and safety features, including forward, lane departure and side collision warnings and automatic emergency braking as well as its adaptive cruise control and so-called Autosteer features, which when used together steers and allows the vehicle to follow (the adaptive cruise control feature) on highways.

While the report didn’t find any evidence that the driver was texting or calling in the moments leading up to the crash, a witness told investigators that he was looking down at what appear to be a smartphone. It’s possible that the driver was holding a coffee or bagel at the time of the crash, the report said.

Autopilot has come under scrutiny by the NTSB, notably a 2016 fatal crash in Florida and a more recent one involving a Walter Huang, who died after his Model X crashed into a highway median in California. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also opened an inquiry into the 2016 fatal crash and ultimately found no defects in the Autopilot system. NTSB determined the 2016 fatal crash was caused by a combination of factors that included limitations of the system.

The family of Huang filed in May 2019 a lawsuit against Tesla and the State of California Department of Transportation. The wrongful death lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court, County of Santa Clara, alleges that errors by Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system caused the crash.

Zhihu may not be as well known outside of China as WeChat or ByteDance’s Douyin, but over the past eight years, it has cultivated a reputation for being one of the country’s most trustworthy social media platforms. Originally launched as a question-and-answer site similar to Quora, Zhihu has grown to be a central hub for professional knowledge, allowing users to interact with experts and companies in a wide range of industries.

Headquartered in Beijing, Zhihu recently raised a $434 million Series F, its biggest round since 2011. The funding also brought Zhihu two important new partners: video and live-streaming app Beijing Kuaishou, which led the round, and Baidu, owner of China’s largest search engine (other participants in the round included Tencent and CapitalToday).

Launched in 2011, Zhihu (the name means “do you know”) is most frequently compared to Quora and Yahoo Answers. While it resembled those Q&A platforms at first, it has grown in scope. Now it would be more accurate to say that the platform is like a combination of Quora, LinkedIn and Medium’s subscription program.

For example, Zhihu has an invitation-only blogging platform for verified experts and since launching official accounts, it has become a channel for companies and organizations to communicate with users. A representative for Zhihu told TechCrunch that the platform had 220 million users and 30,000 official accounts as of January 2019 (for context, there are currently about 800 million Internet users in China), who have posted a total of 130 million answers so far.

The company’s growth will be closely watched since Zhihu is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering. Last November, the company hired its first chief financial officer, Sun Wei, heightening speculation. A representative for the company told TechCrunch the position was created because of Zhihu’s business development needs and that there is currently no timeline for a public listing.

At the same time, the company has also dealt with reports that its growth has slowed.

WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey is taking on even broader responsibilities with a promotion to president and chief operating officer at AT&T (which acquired and renamed Time Warner last year).

According to the official announcement, this is a new position reporting directly to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. Stankey will take on the new position on October 1 while continuing to serve as WarnerMedia CEO.

“Now is the time to more tightly align our collection of world-class content, scaled consumer relationships, technical know-how and innovative advertising technology,” Stephenson said in a statement. He also described Stankey — who’s been at AT&T since 1985 — as “an outstanding executive who has led nearly every area of our business, helped shape our strategy and excelled at operations throughout his career.”

The company also announced that Jeff McElfresh will become CEO of AT&T Communications, replacing John Donovan, who is retiring. (FYI: TechCrunch is owned by AT&T competitor Verizon.)

These shifts come as WarnerMedia is preparing to launch its big streaming play HBO Max next year. The service will include HBO proper, along with other streaming content. It also comes after some notable departures at WarnerMedia, including HBO’s Richard Plepler and Kevin Tsujihara of Warner Bros.

European challenger bank Bunq is announcing a handful of updates today. You now get a better overview of your account with more insights on how you spend money. If you’re going on vacation with someone else, you can now choose to automatically add transactions to a Slice Group. There are also improvements to VAT management for business users.

Slice Groups are shared accounts for owners of the Bunq Travel Card. You can create a group with multiple Bunq users and then add expenses to the group. You can’t add money to a Slice Group directly. It is essentially a group accounting feature that lets you keep track of who paid for what, who has a positive balance and who has a negative balance.

While you could easily add Bunq transactions to a group, you still had to manually add them every time there are some new transactions. You can now turn on AutoSlice, a feature that lets you temporarily add all card transactions to a Slice Group.

In other news, Bunq wants to give you more information about your spending habits. It starts with a new feature called Bunq Insights. As the name suggests, your payments are now automatically categorized so that you can see a breakdown of what you do with your money.

When you travel, Bunq now gives you information about your travel destination, such as the exchange rate as well as tips and tricks for that country. Bunq users can add recommendations for other Bunq users.

And if you’re always wondering if you’re spending too much money after getting paid, Bunq now tries to predict how much money you’ll have left at the end of the month. The company analyzes your past transactions to predict how much you’re going to spend over the coming weeks.

Finally, Bunq is updating AutoVAT for business users who have to deal with VAT in Europe. In addition to setting aside VAT you’ll have to pay back, the app now counts how much VAT you’ve paid so far so that you know how much you can reclaim. By combining these two figures, you get the exact VAT amount for your taxes.

It looks like Apple is playing with the idea of making the Apple Watch’s band a bit smarter.

As spotted by PatentlyApple, the company was granted a handful of patents this morning, all focused on bringing new tricks to the Watch by way of the band.

The first patent describes a sensor built into the Watch or the watch’s band that could use infrared to build a thermal image of your wrist and its identifying traits (like skin texture/arm hair) to identify who is wearing it — sort of like a fingerprint, but from your wrist.

Unlike most of Apple’s other devices, the Apple Watch doesn’t currently have any sort of built-in biometrics for unlocking — there’s no thumbprint sensor for Touch ID, or camera for Face ID. Unlocking your Apple Watch means poking at the screen to punch in a PIN (or, if you’ve configured it to unlock when you unlock your phone, doing that). A sensor setup like this could make the unlocking process automatic without the need to unlock your phone.

The second granted patent describes a Watch band that can adjust itself on the fly — think Nike’s self-tightening shoes, but on your wrist. If the Watch detects that it’s sliding while you’re running (or if the aforementioned thermal sensors need a closer look at your wrist skin) tensioners in the device could tighten or loosen the band on command.

Finally, a third granted patent tinkers with the idea of a Watch band with built-in light-up indicators — like, say, a notification light for incoming texts, or a meter that fills up to tell you at-a-glance how much distance you’ve got left on your run, or a stripe that glows yellow when you’ve got something on your calendar in the next hour. All of this can already be done on the Watch’s screen, of course — this would just allow for it without having to power up the entire display.

As always, it’s worth noting that patents being granted doesn’t guarantee that any such features will make it to the final product — just that Apple found something cool in its R&D labs, and decided to lock it down.

Apple has kept its bands relatively simple so far for the sake of keeping them swappable; they come in all sorts of materials and colors, but the electronic bits are contained within the Watch itself. Adding sensors and indicators to the band complicates that. As the user you’d have to decide: do you want the band you like the most on your wrist, or the one with the fancy notification lights?

Each unhappy startup may be unhappy in its own way, but there’s still wisdom in understanding what drives employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction across companies.

Culture Amp is just one of the companies aiming to help employees anonymously express how they feel about their place of work, but the Melbourne company is using the anonymized employee survey data from thousands of customers to help them learn from each other and chart which initiatives made a dent.

The eight-year-old startup has picked up a new bout of funding to help it extend its base of customers further.

Culture Amp just closed a sizable $82 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital China with participation from Sapphire Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Index Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, Hostplus, Skip Capital, Grok Ventures, Global Founders Capital and TDM Growth Partners.

The company’s Series E doubles the company’s total funding raised to date, which now sits at $158 million. Culture Amp closed its last major round of funding — a $40 million Series D — in July of last year.

The company’s subscription survey software gives customers all of the templates, questions and analytics that they need to track employee sentiment and visualize the data that they get back. The software can be used for things like quarterly engagement surveys, but it can also power performance reviews, goal-setting and self-reflections.

Employee surveys are certainly nothing revolutionary, but Culture Amp is trying to improve the process by helping its customers start to bring anonymous feedback to the team level so that employees can give more direct feedback to their managers.

CEO Didier Elzinga tells me the company now has 2,500 customers with a collective 3 million Culture Amp employee surveys under their belts. Elzinga tells TechCrunch that harnessing the collective intelligence of its network to predict things like employee turnover is perhaps one of its strongest value propositions.

“Once you understand the experience that people are having, once you know where you should focus, how do we actually help you act on it?” he tells TechCrunch. “A large part is bringing to bear the collective intelligence of the thousands of companies we already have so that you can learn from people that have suffered from the same sorts of problems.”

The 400-person company’s customers include McDonald’s, Salesforce, Slack and Airbnb.

A European satellite that measures the Earth’s winds using lasers had a close encounter with one of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation yesterday in a situation that illustrates the growing inadequacy of existing systems for global coordination of orbital issues. It’s getting crowded up there, and email and phone calls between HQs soon won’t cut it.

The near miss was announced yesterday on Twitter by the European Space Administration’s Operations team. It explained, perhaps a might sensationally, that “for the first time ever, ESA has performed a ‘collision avoidance manoeuvre’ to protect one of its satellites from colliding with a ‘mega constellation’ .”

To be clear, and as ESA explained, these maneuvers are actually very common — but they’re almost always to avoid debris and dead satellites, not active ones. These days when you launch a satellite, you’re generally very careful to put it in an orbit that has been carefully calculated to not intersect with that of any other satellite. Pretty straightforward, right?

But things happen; for instance a thruster misfires or another maneuver goes wrong, and suddenly a satellite that was going to pass within a safe distance of another one is actually going to get much, much closer. That’s what seems to have happened here: the Starlink satellite, one of 60 launched earlier this year, somehow found itself on a potential collision course.

SpaceX and ESA exchanged emails on August 28, when the chance of the two craft colliding was around 1 in 50,000; they determined no action was necessary. But a subsequent update from the U.S. Air Force’s tracking infrastructure changed that estimate to about 1 in 600. That’s well below the 1 in 10,000 chance standard for taking measures. (This isn’t just guesswork but allowing for jitter in measurements and other noise that enter tracking of fast-moving orbital objects.)

Here’s where the hiccup happened. With the new and scary probability of a collision, either ESA or SpaceX had to change orbit — again, something that happens a lot, but in this case needs to be coordinated clearly with the other. What if they both adjusted their orbit the same way and increased the chance of disaster?

Unfortunately, SpaceX was not aware of the new probability estimate from the Air Force, and as such persevered in its decision not to adjust its satellite’s trajectory. As a result, the ESA had to make its own maneuver — not fun when the craft in question is performing extremely sensitive measurements using a high-powered lidar system.

Why would SpaceX not want to do anything? Apparently they weren’t in possession of the new, higher estimate.

“A bug in our on-call paging system prevented the Starlink operator from seeing the follow on correspondence on this probability increase,” SpaceX said in a statement. “Had the Starlink operator seen the correspondence, we would have coordinated with ESA to determine best approach with their continuing with their maneuver or our performing a maneuver.”

Ultimately there was no collision and both satellites are happily orbiting the Earth, though Aeolus does have a touch less fuel than before. The problem is not that a satellite had to swerve a bit, because that happens all the time. The problem is that it was an encounter with an active satellite and communications between the two operators was inadequate.

“Nobody did anything wrong. Space is there for everybody to use,” ESA’s Holger Krag told Forbes. “Basically on every orbit you can encounter other objects. Space is not organized. And so we believe we need technology to manage this traffic.”

With plans by SpaceX, Amazon, OneWeb and others to launch constellations of hundreds or thousands of satellites over the years, the possibility of another such encounter is very likely. And a system that worked when there were vanishingly few encounters between active satellites likely won’t work when those encounters are a daily or hourly occurrence.

“This example shows that in the absence of traffic rules and communication protocols, collision avoidance depends entirely on the pragmatism of the operators involved. Today, this negotiation is done through exchanging emails – an archaic process that is no longer viable as increasing numbers of satellites in space mean more space traffic,” said Krag in an ESA news post.

“No one was at fault here, but this example does show the urgent need for proper space traffic management, with clear communication protocols and more automation. This is how air traffic control has worked for many decades, and now space operators need to get together to define automated maneuver coordination,” he continued.

Naturally AI is being brought into the discussion, but also other common-sense rules and improvements to an aging system that is no longer able to be ignored. It plans to make these proposals more solid later this year and hopefully put them into action.

Starship Technologies is fresh off a recent $40 million funding round, and the robotics startup finds itself in a much-changed market compared to when it got its start in 2014. Founded by software industry veterans, including Skype and Rdio co-founder Janus Friis, Starship’s focus is entirely on building and commercializing fleets of autonomous sidewalk delivery robots.

Starship invented this category when it debuted, but five years later it’s one of a number of companies looking to deploy what essentially amounts to wheeled, self-driven coolers that can carry small packages and everyday freight, including fresh food, to waiting customers. CEO Lex Bayer, a former sales leader from Airbnb, took over the top spot at Starship last year and is eager to focus the company’s efforts in a drive to take full advantage of its technology and experience lead.

The result is transforming what looked, to all external observers, like a long-tail technology play into a thriving commercial enterprise.

“We want to do 100 universities in the next 24 months, and we’ll do about 25 to 50 robots on each campus,” Bayer said in an interview about his company’s plans for the future.

Android 10 is now available, assuming you have a phone that already supports Google’s latest version of its mobile operating system. For now, that’s mostly Google’s own Pixel phones, though chances are that most of the phones that were supported during the beta phase will get updated to the release version pretty soon, too.

Since the development of Android pretty much happens in the open these days, the release itself doesn’t feature any surprises. Just like with the last few releases, chances are you’ll have to look twice after the update to see whether your phone actually runs the latest version. There are plenty of tweaks in Android 10, but some of the most interesting new features are a bit hidden and (at least in the betas) off by default.

The one feature everybody has been waiting for is a dark mode and here, Android 10 doesn’t disappoint. The new dark theme is now ready for your night-time viewing, with the promise of improved battery life for your OLED phone and support from a number of apps like Photos and Calendar. Over time, more apps will automatically switch to a dark theme as well, but right now, the number seems rather limited and a bit random, with Fit offering a dark mode while Gmail doesn’t.

The other major tweak is the updated gesture navigation. This remains optional — you can still use the same old three-button navigation Android has long offered. It’s essentially a tweak of the navigation system that launched with Android Pie. For the most part, the new navigation gestures work just fine and feel more efficient than those in Pie, especially when you try to switch between apps. Swiping left and right from the screen replaces the back button, which isn’t immediately obvious, and a slightly longer press on the side of the screen occasionally opens a navigation drawer. I say “occasionally,” because I think this is the most frustrating part of the experience. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The trick to opening the drawer, it seems, is to swipe at an angle that’s well above 45 degrees.

Also new is an updated Smart Reply feature that now suggests actions from your notifications. If a notification includes a link, for example, Smart Reply will suggest opening it in Chrome. Same for addresses, where the notification can take you right to Google Maps, or YouTube videos that you can play in — you guessed it — YouTube. This should work across all popular messaging apps.

There are also a couple of privacy and security features here, including the ability to only share location data with apps while you use them and a new Privacy section in Settings that gives you access to controls for managing your web and app history, as well as your ad settings in a slightly more prominent place.

With the new Google Play system updates, the company can now also push important security and privacy fixes right to the phone from the Google Play store, which allows it to patch issues without having to go through the system update process. Given the slow Android OS upgrade cycles, that’s an important new feature, though it, too, is an evolution of Google’s overall strategy to decouple these updates and core features from the OS updates.

Two other interesting new features are still in beta or won’t be available until later this year, but Google prominently highlights Focus Mode, which allows you to silence specific apps for a while and which is now in beta, and Live Caption, which will launch in the fall on Pixel phones and which can automatically caption videos and audio across all apps. I’ve been beta testing Focus Mode for a bit and I’m not sure it has really made a difference in my digital well-being, but the ability to mute notifications from YouTube during the workday, for example, has probably made me a tiny bit more productive.

Oh, and there’s also native support for foldable phones, but for the time being, there are no foldable phones on the market.

Like with most recent releases, those are just some of the highlights. There are plenty of small tweaks, too, and chances are you’ll notice a few new fonts and visual tweaks here and there. For the most part, though, you can continue to use Android like you always have. Even major changes like the updated gesture controls are optional. It’s very much an evolutionary update, but that’s pretty much the case for any mobile OS these days.

The next version of Google’s mobile operating system starts rolling out this week. Here’s what to expect.

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

1. Now Facebook says it may remove Like counts

Instagram is already testing something similar in seven countries, including Canada and Brazil. Instead of showing the total number of Likes for a post, it displays the names of just a few mutual friends who have Liked it.

Jane Manchun Wong spotted Facebook prototyping the hidden Like counts in its Android app. When we asked the company, it confirmed that it’s considering a test to remove Like counts, though this isn’t live for any users yet.

2. WeChat restricts controversial video face-swapping app Zao, citing ‘security risks’

Zao went viral in China this weekend for its realistic face-swapping videos. But following controversy about its user policy, messaging platform WeChat restricted access to the app.

3. OpenGov raises $51M to boost its cloud-based IT services for government and civic organizations

The company was co-founded by Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale to help governments and other civic organizations organize, analyze and present financial data and more, using cloud-based architecture.

4. YouTube’s Neal Mohan is coming to Disrupt SF

YouTube has found itself front-and-center in the recent debates about free speech, the internet and how the online world is shaping our offline lives, so there will be plenty to talk about when Mohan joins us at Disrupt.

5. Kabbage acquires Radius Intelligence, the marketing tech firm with a database of 20M small businesses

It’s been a tumultuous period for Radius, which announced a merger with its big competitor Leadspace last year, only to quietly cancel the deal three months later. Two months after that, it replaced its longtime CEO.

6. Apple still has work to do on privacy

Natasha Lomas examines whether iPhones are generally superior to Android devices when it comes to security. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

On Equity, Alex and Kate share their thoughts on Peloton’s finances and prospects. And on this week’s Original Content, we review the Netflix series “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.”

October is right around the corner, and if you want to get the lowest possible price on your passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 you have just four days left to make it so. Depending on which pass you buy, you can save up to $1,300, but only if you buy your Disrupt SF pass before the deadline expires at 11:59 p.m. (PST) on September 6.

Some of the tech and investment industry’s greatest leaders, minds and makers will be on hand to share their work, insight and advice. It’s a great opportunity to learn from the people who’ve paved the way. Three full days of programming across four different stages will keep you engaged and inspired. Here’s just one example to pique your interest, and you can check out the full Disrupt agenda here.

Curious about the future of flight? You won’t want to miss our Main Stage interview with Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Kitty Hawk. Thrun’s bona fides are nothing short of impressive. Through X, the Alphabet’s moonshot factory he founded, he helped take self-driving cars from theory to reality. He’s also co-founder and executive chairman of Udacity, the $1 billion online education startup. His current endeavor involves bringing two aircraft — the one-person Flyer and a two-person autonomous taxi called Cora — to market. We can’t wait to hear his take on the future of flight.

Curious about capital? Then head on over to the Extra Crunch Stage to hear John Geiger (John Geiger Company) and Kathryn Petralia (Kabbage) talk about alternative ways founders can raise cash without talking to investors. Say what?!

Curious about Startup Alley? Get a head start on your networking strategy by perusing our directory of startups exhibiting in Startup Alley. Be sure to stop by and meet our TC Top Picks — these 45 outstanding startups represent the best in their respective tech categories.

And of course, you won’t want to miss the Startup Battlefield. It’s a fast-paced pitch-a-thon featuring the very best early-stage startups. Watch them pitch and demo under pressure to a tough panel of expert tech and VC judges. Who will win the day — and the $100,000 prize?

Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place on October 2-4 — just one month away. But the early-bird pricing disappears promptly at 11:59 p.m. (PST) on September 6. Buy your discounted tickets now, save a bundle and we’ll see you in San Francisco.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is perhaps best known for his acting across films like “10 Things I Hate About You,” “500 Days of Summer” and “Snowden.” But times weren’t always peachy for Gordon-Levitt as a creative. After leaving the movie business to go to college, he realized the limits of the industry on his potential as a creative. He decided he wanted to take his creativity into his own hands and launched a message board where he’d post films, songs, etc.

But what started as a side hobby has turned into a production company in its own right, using technology to allow dozens of people to collaborate on a creative project. And, more importantly, it gives each contributor fair credit for their work, paying out individual creatives based on how much of their work was featured in the final product.

Obviously, it goes without saying that we’re thrilled to have Joseph Gordon-Levitt join us at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in October.

Far too rarely do we see creatives supported by the platforms where they post their work. With the current media landscape, and the ever-growing dominance of social media, the relationship between platform and creative is strained at best. And more importantly, it incentivizes all the wrong things.

From an interview in VentureBeat:

If what you’re going for is posting on YouTube, or Instagram, or platforms that monetize through the ad model, where they’re really just going for sheer volume and have the ability to manipulate people through ads, virality is the measure of success. And I think this is exactly at the heart of what’s interesting to me about doing [HitRecord]. I think if that is your measure of success, you’re going to undermine a lot of what’s actually meaningful and joyful about creativity. And I’m actually concerned for the human race’s creative spirit, because so much of our collective creativity is now destined for these platforms that are monetized by this sort of attention economy model. And it twists one’s understanding of one’s own creativity, and what the value of being creative is.

At Disrupt SF, we’ll discuss the growth of the HitRecord platform, plans for that fresh $6.4 million in Series A funding and how founders can seize this moment to provide collaborative tools that align creatives with the platforms they’re using.

Disrupt SF runs October 2 to October 4 at the Moscone Center in the heart of San Francisco. Tickets are available here.

We need to keep the focus on the community harmed and not on our feelings for the harm-doers.

Many areas of technology—from pacemakers to space missions—deliberately create controlled amounts of uncertainty to make devices and processes work better.