Category: Tech news

During Computex last week, Sennheiser gave media a sneak peek at its first wireless gaming headset, the GSP 670, slated to ship starting at the beginning of next month.

The GSP 670 retails for €349 (about $393), significantly pricier then other popular wireless gaming headsets (as well as its wired predecessor, the Sennheiser GSP 600, priced at $249.95). Sennheiser is hoping its features, as well as the company’s reputation for excellent sound quality and comfortable headsets, will convince gamers to take the plunge. (When I tried on a pair at Computex, it delivered on wearability, connection speeds and audio quality, but of course it is hard to tell how headsets will feel and sound after hours of gaming, versus a few minutes of testing).

Despite the freedom afforded by wireless, many gamers stick with wired headsets to avoid reductions in sound quality and connection speeds or having to worry about battery levels, issues that Sennheiser addresses with the GSP 670’s features. Like other wireless headsets, the GSP 670 needs to be connected to a wireless dongle. Each one comes with a GSA 70 compact USB dongle with proprietary technology that Sennheiser developed to ensure a low-latency connection it promises transmits sounds with “near-zero delay.” The USB is compatible with PCs and the Sony Playstation 4. The GSP 670 also has Bluetooth, so users can pair it with their smartphones and tablets as well.

The GSP 670’s microphone is noise-cancelling and can be muted by raising the boom arm. The headset has two volume wheels to allow users to control chat audio and game audio separately. Gamers can also adjust the audio on the GSP 670 with Sennheiser’s Gaming Suite for Windows, a software tool that lets users switch between audio presets or customize sound levels, and also includes surround sound modes and an equalizer.

In terms of battery, Sennheiser claims the GSP 670’s quick-charging battery can run for two hours after a seven minute charge. When fully charged, it says the battery can last for up to 20 hours on Bluetooth and 16 hours when connected via the GSA 70 dongle. The headset has automatic shutdown to save power.

The GSP 670 is currently available for pre-order on Sennheiser’s website and will ship beginning on July 1.

FoodShot Global, a prize platform devoted to transforming the world’s food and agriculture industries, has awarded the first round of prizes for its Innovating Soil 3.0 competition. 

Trace Genomics, a startup developing an analytics service for soil health to optimize the use of farmland, has received an undisclosed investment from FoodShot’s investment partner, S2G Ventures.

Additional awards of $250,000 were given to Keith Paustian to speed up the global adaptation of his COMET tool systems, which provide farmers with metrics and information on regenerative farming; and Gerlinde De Deyn, for her work studying biodiversity over time. 

A $35,000 award was given to Dorn Cox to support the development of his open-source data project that will look to catalog knowledge around agriculture techniques and distribute that information freely to a global community of farmers. 

“I founded FoodShot Global envisioning a new way to harness the power of innovation, capital, and the collaborative spirit of the world’s leading stakeholders to effect change,” said FoodShot Global founder and chairman Victor Friedberg. “We chose to start with soil because any future that imagines 10 billion people eating healthy and sustainably with equal access will require healthy soil. The three people we announced today are all groundbreakers whose inspired work lays the foundation for the next generation of solutions to the urgency we now face as a civilization. I couldn’t be more impressed and inspired by these inaugural FoodShot Global award winners and look forward to sharing what they’re doing with a larger audience.”

Earlier this year, Amazon announced its Scout sidewalk delivery robot. At the time, details were sparse, except for the fact that the company had started to make deliveries in a neighborhood in Washington State. Today, at Amazon’s re:Mars conference, I sat down with Sean Scott, the VP in charge of Scout, to talk about how his team built the robot, how it finds its way around and what its future looks like.

These relatively small blue robots could be roaming a sidewalk near you soon, though as of now, Amazon isn’t quite ready to talk about when and where it will expand its network from its single neighborhood to other areas.

“For the last decade, we’ve invested billions of dollars in cargo planes and delivery vans, fulfillment center robots, and last holiday period, we shipped over a billion products with Prime free shipping,” Scott told me. “So it’s my job as VP of Amazon Scout to bring another new, innovative, safe and sustainable solution to this delivery network to help us really grow quickly and efficiently to meet customer demand.”

Currently, in Amazon’s trial, the robots are always accompanied by human assistants. Those assistants — and they probably look a bit like robot dog walkers as they trot through the neighborhood — are currently the ones who are taking the packages out of the robot when they arrive at their destination and put it on the customers’ doorsteps. For now, that also means the customers don’t have to be home, though chances are they will have to be once this project rolls out to more users.

As of now, when it’s ready to make deliveries, Amazon drives a large van to the neighborhood and the Scout robots leave from there and return when they are done. Scott wouldn’t say how far the robots can travel, but it seems reasonable to assume that they could easily go for a mile or two.

As we learned earlier this year, Amazon did make a small acquisition to kickstart the program but it’s worth stressing that it now does virtually all of the work in house, including building and assembling the robots and writing the software for it.

“For Scout we’re actually owning the entire development from the industrial design to the actual hardware, mechanical, electrical, the software, the systems, manufacturing and operations,” said Scott. “That really helps us control everything we’re doing.” Having that end-to-end control enables the team to iterate significantly faster.

The team even built a rig to test the Scout’s wheels and in the process, learned that the wheels’ material was actually too soft to survive the rigors of daily sidewalk driving for long.

Inside its labs, the team also built a sidewalk environment for real-world testing and did most of the initial training in the real world but also heavily relies on working with simulations now. Indeed, since there are basically no maps for navigating sidewalks, the team has to build its own maps of every neighborhood it goes into and it then uses this highly detailed map in its simulation.

That’s important, Scott noted, because simply using a game engine with repeating textures just wouldn’t be good enough to train the algorithms that keep the robot on track. To do that, you need real-world textures, for example.

“We thought about building a synthetic world, but it turns out building a synthetic world is much harder than copying the real world,” Scott said. “So we decided to copy the real world.” He showed me a video of the simulated robot moving through the simulation, using a map that looks a bit like a highly zoomed-in Google Maps 3D view. Not perfect, but perfectly reasonable, down to the gutters on the street and the small bumps where two concrete plates on the sidewalk line up.

This simulation allows Amazon to make thousands of simulated deliveries before the team ever goes out to test the robot on the street. In the demo I saw, the robot had no issues navigating around obstacles, pausing for crossing cats and getting to his destination. That’s possible thanks to a combination of detailed maps and high-resolution imagery of its surroundings, combined with GPS data (when available) and cutting-edge machine-learning techniques.

Once it is out and about, though, the robot will have to face the elements. It’s watertight, something you’d expect from a company that is based in Seattle, and it’s got sensors all around to ensure it can both find its way on sidewalks that are often littered with obstacles (think trash day) and full of curious cats and dogs. Around the robot is an array of cameras and ultrasonic sensors, all of which are then evaluated by a set of machine learning algorithms that help it plot its path.

“We jokingly refer to the sidewalk as the Wild West,” said Scott. “Every sidewalk is a snowflake and every neighborhood is a collection of snowflakes.”

At times, the robot also has to deviate from the sidewalk, simply because it is blocked. In those cases, it will opt for driving on the street. That’s something local laws in many states now allow for, though Scott tells me that the team only considers it when it’s a street where a pedestrian would also feel comfortable. “If you feel safe walking on that road, that’s where we want to be. We want to be viewed as a pedestrian and treated as a pedestrian,” he said. And that’s how the law in Washington State looks at these robots, which, for example, mean that they have to be given the right of way.

Scott also noted that the team designed the robot so it would be visible when necessary, with blinking lights when it crosses a street, for example, but also a bit boring, so that it would blend into the environment. “We really want this to blend into the background and be part of the environment and not be this loud and obnoxious thing that’s always rolling through the neighborhood,” said Scott. So it has the bright blue Amazon Prime color on top to be seen, but is otherwise relatively bland and without any anthropomorphic features. It’s just your average neighborhood delivery robot, in other terms.

As it moves along, it makes very deliberate movements, which Scott believes will make people feel more comfortable around it. Unlikely a drone, there’s no major risk when any parts of the robot break during a mission. Somebody can simply come and pick it up. Still, the team says it did design the robot with safety at the front and center of its process.

One thing that’s currently not clear — and that Amazon didn’t want to talk about yet — is how it will solve the actual handover of the package. Right now, the assistant handles this part, but in Amazon’s photos, the customer walks up to the robot and takes the package out of it. That’s a reasonable scenario, I think. In the long run, Amazon could also outfit the robot with multiple compartments to make multiple deliveries in one go.

One advantage of the robot has over human delivery people is that if you’re not home, it can just wait for a while, Scott said. So it’s conceivable that you’ll come home one day and there’s a Scout, standing patiently in front of your door, waiting to deliver your latest impulse order. Until then, it’ll likely be a while, though. Amazon won’t commit to any timetable or wider rollout.

Eight Inc, the design firm best known for conceptualizing the Apple Store and the now-iconic giant glass cube on 5th Ave in New York, has proposed to restore Notre-Dame’s sadly destroyed roof and spire — with a giant glass roof and spire. I don’t think the French will go for it.

The idea is to recreate the top of the building entirely out of structural glass, which is stronger than normal glass and thus could support itself without any internal framework.

It’s hard to know what to make of the proposal. It seems to me so inappropriate that it borders on parody. Leaving aside the practical concerns of keeping the glass clean and replacing any portion that’s cracked or something, the very idea of capping a gothic cathedral made almost entirely of stone with a giant sunroof seems like the exact opposite of what the church’s creators would have wanted.

Tim Kobe, founder of Eight, disagrees.

“I believe this definitive example of French gothic architecture requires a deep respect and appreciation of the history and intent of the original design,” he told Dezeen. “It should not be about the ego of a new architectural expression but a solution to honor this historic structure.”

I find that statement, especially the part about ego of new architectural expression, a little difficult to swallow when the proposal is to rebuild a nearly thousand-year-old cathedral in the style of an Apple Store.

He called the glass roof and spire “spiritual and luminous,” saying they evoked “the impermanence of architecture and the impermanence of life.”

That seems an odd thing to strive for. I’m not a religious person, but I as I understand it the entire idea of a cathedral is to create a permanent, solid representation of the very permanent presence of God and His everlasting kingdom of heaven. Life is fleeting, sure, but giant stone cathedrals that have outlasted empires seem a poor mascot for that fact.

Of course, it must be said that this wouldn’t be the only garish glass structure in the city that traditionalists would hate: The pyramid at the Louvre has attracted great ire for many years now. And it’s much smaller.

The French Senate (and many others) have expressed that they would like the cathedral to be restored to as close to its original state as possible — preferably with something better than centuries-old dry tinder holding up the roof. But President Macron has called for something more than simple reconstruction, and Prime Minister Philippe backs him, especially concerning the spire, which was a relatively late addition and as such isn’t quite as historic as the rest.

A design competition is to be held to create a new spire “adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era,” which certainly could mean many things and inspire many interesting ideas. Here’s hoping they’re a little better than this one.

When I first watched the new Netflix Original film “I Am Mother,” I assumed that the robotic Mother (voiced by Rose Byrne) was a CG creation. How else could you create a robot that looked so inhuman, and that that could also run around the film’s post-apocalyptic environments so gracefully?

But in a bonus interview for the Original Content podcast, director Grant Sputore estimated that 99 percent of the shots of Mother are completely practical, consisting of nothing more than a person wearing “a fancy bit of costume.”

“It’s both a budgetary thing, because we knew how we were planning to make the film — but also, we’re children of ‘80s and ‘90s cinema,” Sputore said. “So we worship at the altar of ‘Robocop’ and ‘Predator’ and the first ‘Terminator’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ and all of Stan Winston’s work, which is most of those movies … It’s for our own satisfaction, as much as anything.”

The film focuses on the relationship between Mother and her adopted human daughter (Clara Rugaard), who has been completely isolated from the outside world — until the arrival of a mysterious stranger played by Hilary Swank prompts Daughter to question everything she’s been told.

When I asked how Sputore wanted to distinguish “I Am Mother” from all the previous movies about robots, he said there are fewer than you think:

All the films that you think are about robots are largely about androids. So like ‘Blade Runner,’ for instance, is a seminal contribution to the sci-fi genre and many people would say that it’s about robots, but really it’s about androids. Which sounds like semantics, but it’s significant [from] two different points of view, One: Android movies tend to focus on the question of, do androids have feelings? ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ Are they like us? Where do you draw the line between robots and humans? I feel like that question has been done … and our film is not about that at all.

Plus, of course, android movies are usually cheaper to make, because you can just use a human actor.

Sputore said he was less interested in the dividing line between humans and androids, and more in the relationship between humans and robots.

While he’s clearly spent a lot of time watching classic science fiction films, he said Mother was actually based on a real machine, namely the Atlas robot created by Boston Dynamics. And where an ’80s movie like “Terminator” might use killer robots as a way to address fears around the emergence of computers and automation, Sputore suggested that our relationship with robots has become a much more real, and much more pressing, issue.

“It’s a little more scary when people start losing their jobs to smart machines,” he said.

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

Homeland Security has given the maximum severity score for a vulnerability in a popular smart building automation system.

Optergy’s Proton allows building owners and managers to remotely monitor energy consumption and manage who can access the premises. The box is web-connected, and connects to other devices — like air conditioning and heating — in the building for real-time monitoring through a web interface.

CISA, the government’s dedicated cybersecurity unit, said the device had serious vulnerabilities.

An advisory said an attacker could gain “full system access” through an “undocumented backdoor script.” This, the advisory said, could allow the attacker to run commands on a vulnerable device with the highest privileges. Backdoors typically grant hidden or undocumented access to a system, and can be used for tech support to remotely login and troubleshoot issues. But if found by an attacker, backdoors can also be used maliciously.

The vulnerability required a “low level” of skill to remotely exploit, and was rated 10.0, the highest score on the industry standard common vulnerability scoring system.

The advisory noted several other bugs, one of which was rated with a score of 9.9.

Although 10.0 scores are not unheard of, they are not common in everyday technology. 10.0 scores rely on vulnerabilities that can have a significant impact on the system’s integrity and availability, or put data on the affected system at high risk of damage or theft.

Gjoko Krstic, a security researcher at Applied Risk who reported the vulnerabilities to Optergy, told TechCrunch that the bug was “very, very bad” and “easy to exploit.” According to Krstic, there are 50 buildings vulnerable at the time of writing. His findings were presented last month in Amsterdam at Hack In The Box, a security conference, as part of wider issues with four other vendors — including Opertgy.

By exploiting the vulnerability, it’s possible to “shut down a building with one click,” he said at his talk.

Optergy president Steve Guzelimian said the company fixed the issues but wouldn’t confirm how many devices were affected. The company says it serves more than 1,800 facilities.

“We fix everything brought to our attention as well as do our own regular testing,” he said.

Ticketmaster’s dominance has led to ridiculous service fees, scalpers galore and exclusive contracts that exploit venues and artists. The moronic approval of venue operator and artist management giant Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster in 2010 produced an anti-competitive juggernaut. It pressures venues to sign ticketing contracts under veiled threat that artists would otherwise be routed to different concert halls. Now it’s become difficult for venues, artists and fans to avoid Ticketmaster, which charges fees as high as 50% that many see as a ripoff.

The Ticket Fairy wants to wrestle away from Ticketmaster control of venues while giving fans ways to earn tickets for referring their friends. The startup is doing that by offering the most technologically advanced ticketing platform that not only handles sales and check-ins, but acts as a full-stack Salesforce for concerts that can analyze buyers and run ad campaigns while thwarting scalpers. Co-founder Ritesh Patel says The Ticket Fairy has increased revenue for event organizers by 15% to 25% during its private beta focused on dance music festivals.

Now after 850,000 tickets sold, it’s officially launching its ticketing suite and actively poaching venues from Eventbrite as it moves deeper into esports and conventions. With a little more scale, it will be ready to challenge Ticketmaster for lucrative clients.

Ritesh’s combination of product and engineering skills, rapid progress and charismatic passion for live events after throwing 400 of his own has attracted an impressive cadre of angel investors. They’ve delivered a $2.5 million seed round for Ticket Fairy, adding to its $485,000 pre-seed from angels like Twitch/Atrium founder Justin Kan, Twitch COO Kevin Lin and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.

The new round includes YouTube founder Steve Chen, former Kleiner Perkins partner (and Mark’s sister) Arielle Zuckerberg and funds like 500 Startups, ex-Uber angels Fantastic Ventures, G2 Ventures, Tempo Ventures and WeFunder. It’s also scored music industry angels like Serato DJ hardware CEO AJ Bertenshaw, Spotify’s head of label licensing Niklas Lundberg, and celebrity lawyer Ken Hertz, who reps Will Smith and Gwen Stefani.

“The purpose of starting The Ticket Fairy was not to be another Eventbrite, but to reduce the risk of the person running the event so they can be profitable. We’re not just another shopping cart,” Patel says. The Ticket Fairy charges a comparable rate to Eventbrite’s $1.59 + 3.5% per ticket plus payment processing that brings it closer to 6%, but Patel insists it offers far stronger functionality.

Constantly clad in his golden disco hoodie over a Ticket Fairy t-shirt, Patel lives his product, spending late nights dancing and taking feedback at the events his clients host. He’s been a savior of SXSW the past two years, injecting the aging festival that shuts down at 2am with multi-night after-hours raves. Featuring top DJs like Pretty Lights in creative locations cab drivers don’t believe are real, The Ticket Fairy’s parties have won the hearts of music industry folks.

The Ticket Fairy co-founders. Center and inset left: Ritesh Patel. Inset right: Jigar Patel

Now the Y Combinator startup hopes its ticketing platform will do the same thanks to a slew of savvy features:

• Earn A Ticket – The Ticket Fairy supercharges word of mouth marketing with a referral system that lets fans get a rebate or full-free ticket if they get enough friends to buy a ticket. Indeed, 30% of ticket buyers are now sharing a Ticket Fairy referral link, and Patel says the return on investment is $30 in revenue for each $1 paid out in rewards, with 10% to 25% of all ticket sales coming from referrals. A public leaderboard further encourages referrals, with those at the top eligible for backstage passes, free merch and bar tabs. And to prevent mass spamming, only buyers, partners and street teamers get a referral code.
• Creative Payment Options – The startup offers “FreeFund” tickets for free events that otherwise see huge no-show rates. Users pay a small deposit that’s refunded when they scan their ticket for entry, discouraging RSVPs from those who won’t come. Buyers can also pay on layaway with Affirm or LayBuy and then earn a ticket before their debt is due.
• Anti-Scalping – The Ticket Fairy offers identity-locked tickets that must be presented with the buyer’s ID on arrival, which means customers can’t scalp them. Instead, the startup offers a waitlist for sold-out events, and buyers can sell their tickets back to the company, which then redistributes them to a specific friend or whoever’s at the top of the waitlist at face value with a new QR code. Patel says client SunAndBass Festival hasn’t had a scalped ticket in five years of working with the ticketer.
• Clever Analytics – Never wasting an opportunity, The Ticket Fairy lets events collect contact info and demand before ticket sales start with its pre-registration system. It can create multiple variants of ticketing sites designed for different demographics, like rock versus dance fans for a festival, track sales and demographics in real time and relay instant stats about check-ins at the door. Integration of email managers like Mailchimp and sales pixels like Facebook plus the ability to instantly retarget people who abandoned their shopping via Facebook Custom Audience ads makes marketing easier. And all the metrics, budgets and expenses are automatically organized into financial reports to eliminate spreadsheet busywork.

Still, the biggest barrier to adoption remains the long exclusive contracts Ticketmaster and other giants like AEG coerce venues into in the U.S. Abroad, venues typically work with multiple ticket promoters who sell from the same pool, which is why 80% of The Ticket Fairy’s business is international right now. In the U.S., ticketing is often handled by a single company, except for the 8% of tickets artists can sell however they want. That’s why The Ticket Fairy has focused on signing up non-traditional venues for festivals, trade convention halls, newly built esports arenas, as well as concert halls.

“Coming from the event promotion background, we understand the risk event organizers take in creating these experiences,” The Ticket Fairy’s co-founder and Ritesh’s brother Jigar Patel explains. “The odds of breaking even are poor and many are unable to overcome those challenges, but it is sheer passion that keeps them going in the face of financial uncertainty and multi-year losses.” As competitors’ contracts expire, The Ticket Fairy hopes to swoop in by dangling its sales-boosting tech. “We get locked out of certain things because people are locked in a contract, not because they don’t want to use our system.”

The live music industry can be brutal, though. Events can have slim margins, organizers are loathe to change their process and it’s a sales-heavy process convincing them to try new software. But while the record business has been redefined by streaming, ticketing looks a lot like it did a decade ago. That makes it ripe for disruption.

“The events industry is more important than ever, with artists making the bulk of their income from touring instead of record sales, and demand from fans for live experiences is increasing at a global level,” Jigar concludes. “When events go out of business, everybody loses, including artists and fans. Everything we do at The Ticket Fairy has that firmly in mind – we are here to keep the ecosystem alive.”

2019 is a great year for Zoom (Nasdaq: ZM). The company outperformed analyst expectations with the release of its first earnings report on Thursday.

The profitable video communications business, which went public this April in one of the year’s most successful initial public offerings, posted revenues of $122 million for the three months ended April 30, 2019, representing a year-over-year increase of 109%.

The Zoom stock is rising in after-hours trading following the news. Zoom closed up 2% Thursday at just over $79 per share. The stock has been trading at more than double its initial offering price in the two months following its IPO.

“In our first quarter as a public company, strong execution and expanding adoption of Zoom’s video-first unified communications platform drove total revenue growth of 103% year-over-year,” Zoom founder and chief executive officer Eric Yuan said in a statement. “Delivering happiness to our customers is our number one priority. If we keep them happy, we believe we will succeed today and in the future.”

Zoom, once a relatively under-the-radar tech unicorn, continues to defy expectations. The company priced its IPO back in April at a meager $36 per share only to pop 81% at its Nasdaq debut.

In its first earnings report, the company beat expectations once again. Analysts had expected revenue of $111.4 million with adjusted earnings per share of just under 1 cent, compared to Zoom’s confirmed earnings of 3 cents per share.

For the full year, San Jose-based Zoom expects total revenue of between $535 million and $540 million and non-GAAP income (loss) from operations of between $0 and $3 million.

WarnerMedia’s plans for a three-tiered streaming service appear to be in flux. The AT&T-owned company is reportedly scrapping that idea and opting instead to offer HBO, Cinemax and the library of Warner Bros. content in a single subscription service that would cost between $16 and $17 a month, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

The service would first be offered as a beta product later this year and could be offered broadly as early as next March.

TechCrunch will update the article if WarnerMedia responds to a request for comment.

This latest development follows a number of changes over at WarnerMedia, including the departure of HBO CEO Richard Pleper and Turner president David Levy.

AT&T first opened up in November about its plans for its WarnerMedia streaming service. The company said at the time that the service would have three tiers — an entry-level, movie-focused service; a premium tier with original programming and blockbusters; and a bundle that includes them both.

During an earnings call a few months later,  AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson expounded on the service and said it would have a “two-sided business model.” The idea was to include subscription-based, commercial-free programming on the high-end as well as an entry-level portion of the service that will be ad-supported, according to the Stephenson’s comments at the time.

Whatever the structure ultimately ends up being, the aim is to leverage the entertainment properties AT&T gained by way of its Time Warner acquisition last year.

Autonomous vehicle startup Zoox has a history of keeping its progressive plans to itself. But that’s starting to change.

The venture-backed company that is creating ground-up fully autonomous electric vehicles is ready to share a bit more about its tech, strategy and plans. And who better to talk to than co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson, the person who oversees the company’s software, artificial intelligence, computing and sensing platforms.

We’re excited to announce that Levinson will join us onstage at TC Sessions: Mobility on July 10 in San Jose. TechCrunch will discuss with Levinson the tech that is driving the company’s autonomous vehicles, recent changes at Zoox — including its new CEO Aicha Evans, challenges facing the company and its deployment plans.

Levinson is among a group of insiders who participated in early government-backed competitions aimed at pushing the development of autonomous vehicles. While completing a computer science PhD and post-doc under Sebastian Thrun at Stanford University, Levinson developed algorithms for the school’s winning entry in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. He went on to lead the self-driving car team’s research efforts before joining Zoox.

Levinson also co-created a popular mobile photography app, Pro HDR, that has been purchased by more than a million people.

Levinson is just one of the many leaders in autonomous vehicles, scooters and electric mobility who will participate in TC Sessions: Mobility.

The agenda is packed with some of the biggest names and most exciting startups in the transportation industry, including Mobileye co-founder and CEO Amnon Shashua, Alisyn Malek with May Mobility, Dmitri Dolgov at Waymo, Karl Iagnemma of Aptiv, Seleta Reynolds of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and Ford Motor CTO Ken Washington. With early-bird ticket sales ending soon, you’ll want to be sure to grab your tickets. Other participants include Katie DeWitt of Scoot, Argo AI’s chief safety officer Summer Craze Fowler, Uber’s engineering director for Elevate Mark Moore and Stonly Baptiste, co-founder of early-stage venture capital fund Urban Us.

We have a few surprises too, including demos showcasing some cool tech and startups coming out of stealth.

The event will feature startup founders and industry experts who will partake in discussions about the future of transportation, the promise and problems of autonomous vehicles, the potential for bikes and scooters, investing in early-stage startups and more.

Early-bird tickets are now on sale — save $100 on tickets before prices go up after June 14.

Students, you can grab your tickets for just $45.

By all accounts, we appear to be in the early stages of a classic “hype cycle” about the potential for uses of blockchain technology. Careful analysts need to filter out that noise, but, as with all technology bubbles, there are blockchain skeptics, and blockchain enthusiasts.

I am somewhere in the middle — currency speculation, in my opinion, is nothing but a big distraction; it is improving information services that I am interested in. And I’m most interested in technologies that show promise in bringing more accuracy and efficiency to the worlds of copyright and licensing.

So, does blockchain technology show meaningful promise for real-world copyright and licensing applications? Let’s take a closer look.

What are blockchains, and why should I care?

What is a blockchain? Why are so many startups and techno-pundits going on and on about it? What sort of problems can it solve, and who has these problems? And, more importantly, what is it good for (in the sense of being useful)?

Simply and practically put, in this context a block is a unique number, derived mathematically through computing. This number is applied for a single use, which typically would be as the root identifier for a digital work of any sort. Examples of a work protected by such a blockchain would include a document (PDF) or the source code for a program, or a digital image, or anything in a fixed form represented in ones and zeroes.

Once established as the root identifier, any changes to the digital work are written — more numbers — into the blockchain, which is then distributed, through a network, to all the parties participating in this block, at each of whose “locations” third parties (including but not limited to “others involved with the work”) can see the applicable updated information. This distribution of updates explains why blockchains are categorized as “distributed digital ledgers,” such that the entire transaction history of any item provided with a blockchain is, in theory, always updated and available to inspection.

For the purposes of this article, any time I say “blockchain” I intend to refer to a distributed digital ledger technology, whether one that already exists, or is invented in the near future. I don’t mean any particular implementation. And, although the recent spate of articles talking about blockchain is probably a direct result of its association with cryptocurrencies, such as the well-known and controversial Bitcoin (although Ethereum and later implementations seem to represent an improvement on the original concept), I think it important to note that tradeable currency of any sort is not a necessary part of blockchain implementations.

Rather, as at the amusement park or in collecting comics, while it is always possible to use unique tokens to trade, it is not a required and inevitable result of using the technology. Rather, cryptocurrencies introduce an additional element to the theory and practice of blockchain — the token — which is an element of no concern to our focus here.

Of course, there are many applications for which blockchains simply aren’t suitable. A critical reader can easily find as many papers criticizing the hype around blockchain as a new “snake oil” as those suggesting that the technology holds promise.

For now, let’s assume that these limitations can and will be overcome in the next 3-5 years. Where might we be then — in terms of the potential for practical implementation of this technology — in addressing important problems surrounding licensing in copyright and perhaps other IP?

For one, copyright registrars or similar entities could create a blockchain to serve as a global registry, and then invite significant rightsholders and consumers in as nodes — this would meet the “no-personal-trust-required” mindset of blockchain enthusiasts. I’d see this as supplementary to existing systems and relatively fast to implement.

A blockchain-derived content identifier, when used in the service of creators and their works, could become one of many unique identifiers already in place, such as ISBN, ORCID, DOI, ISNI, ISRC and so forth. The International Standard Content Code (ISCC) is an experiment in exactly this vein.

The simplest and easiest fix to a copyright problem a simple blockchain might bring is the old (and nearly useless) “poor man’s copyright,” which boils down to creating a simple timestamp for your work by snail-mailing yourself a copy via the USPS. The folks over at Rightschain are seeking to take that old hack up a notch, although problems of cost-at-scale may limit broader feasibility.

Note, too, that blockchains are unlikely to be of much use in mitigating run-of-the-mill infringements; it is still just too easy to crop or screen-scrape or dumb-down the high-quality version of record and create a “good enough to pirate” version. And this is likely to remain true for some time.

Although I can foresee significant difficulties with the grayer areas of custom licensing, and may even be unhelpful when it comes to legitimate fair uses, blockchains might serve as a natural fit for storing the sale and terms of more routine licenses. For example, producing and distributing e-books. Self-executing contracts — ones that are limited to entries in the ledger — might be quite useful in such a context. Essentially, the license contract could include (or exclude) resale of the rights and the ledger could enforce it.

In the rarefied domain of copyright recordation, terminations and transfers, I can envision a blockchain that is quite useful in providing access to the public about updates in the reversion of rights back to a creator, or transfer to a new agent, or other recorded rights transactions of that sort.

As with any promising and potentially disruptive technology, it will stand or fall on the usefulness it demonstrates in addressing real-world problems to which answers are sought by real people. If there are costs — and there inevitably are costs — those who will bear them need to be convinced by clear creation of new value.

Not persuaded? I, too, remain skeptical. But on balance, I do wonder if, given the real-world content and rights issues that the industries that depend on copyright and licensing already have to deal with on a daily basis, a critical look a few steps ahead into a promising technology is warranted.

What do you think?

Disclosures: I own no cryptocurrencies, have never owned any and don’t expect to own any. I have no financial stake in any of the companies I have mentioned. 

Voatz, the four-year-old, Boston, Mass.-based voting and citizen engagement platform that has been at the center of debate over the merits and dangers of mobile voting, has raised $7 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Medici Ventures and Techstars, with participation from Urban Innovation Fund and Oakhouse Partners.

Voatz, which currently employs 17 people, is modeled after other software-as-a-service companies but geared toward election jurisdictions, working with state and local governments to conduct elections and provide related election management and cybersecurity services.

As we reported back in March, the city of Denver agreed to implement a mobile voting pilot in its May municipal election using Voatz’s technology, an opportunity that was offered exclusively to active-duty military, their eligible dependents and overseas voters using their smartphones.

The company hasn’t yet shared how many people wound up using the platform. As Voatz co-founder and CEO Nimit Sawhney told us late yesterday, “Our most recent election in Denver finished last night on June 4th and the post-election audit will be beginning shortly.”

Denver was not the company’s first pilot program. Rather, Voatz had conducted more than 30 pilots previously, including two in West Virginia last year that attracted the financial backing of Tusk Philanthropies, the philanthropic operation of investor and strategist Bradley Tusk.

As for where Voatz will be used next, Sawhney says to “stay tuned. The next phase of our pilot programs will be announced by the relevant jurisdictions a bit later in the summer.”

Voatz has become the best-known mobile voting app, which has also made it the target of some unflattering attention, including last summer, when numerous security experts criticized it roundly in a Vanity Fair piece. One said it was “going to backfire.” Another warned that the “United States needs some form of vetting process for online voting in elections.” A software expert separately called Voatz a “horrifically bad idea.”

Apparently investors, along with a growing number of city and state governments, are still willing to bet that it’s better than what’s currently available.

Voatz had previously raised $2.2 million in funding, led by the venture arm of Overstock.com.

Want to attract (and retain) top talent, making your company’s workforce more competitive and cutting down on turnover costs to boot? The simplest way to do so starts with the benefits and policies you offer to employees.

We already know that benefits play a major hand in how candidates evaluate a job offer. One recent survey conducted by Fairygodboss, the largest career community for women, in partnership with Extend Fertility, found that 87% of professional women say a benefits package is important or very important to them when interviewing at a company. Respondents stated that the presence (or absence) of certain benefits would impact their likelihood to stay at an employer, too.

So, which specific benefits and policies are the ones that will set your company apart as a modern, desirable workplace? We spoke to experts — from CEOs to heads of HR — to find out exactly what the benefits package of today’s most relevant employers looks like.

1. Summer Fridays

Giving employees a few extra hours to jumpstart their weekend through “Summer Fridays” can lead to a whole spate of positive benefits, including improved morale, focus and engagement at work, according to Brian Kropp, Group Vice-President of HR at Gartner . “Most companies have told us that with this benefit in place, they’ve found employees work harder earlier in the week because they know they have to complete their work before Friday,” Kropp said.

2. Pay transparency

Via Getty Image / abstractdesignlabs

The days of salary and bonus conversations happening only behind closed doors are long gone. Thanks to whisper networks and a growing belief in salary sharing, for many companies, this information is available with or without their consent. Companies who want to appear modern (as well as do the right thing) should embrace this trend through official pay transparency policies.

“Companies that don’t want to appear outdated have written pay, incentive and bonus plans for all employees at all levels so that how pay is calculated is not a mystery,” Sarah Morgan, Senior HR Director of SafeStreets USA, said.

“The compensation is equitable across gender and races so everyone is paid fairly based on the position, experience, skills and responsibilities. Such companies are also open about their pay policies and share general information about how much people are earning at every level. This may be shared as ranges or as specific amounts.”

3. Inclusion initiatives

The competition for top talent today is more fierce than ever. And when it comes to attracting and retaining that talent, we know that benefits play a major hand in how well an employer fares.

To that end, Fairygodboss, the largest career community for women, in partnership with Extend Fertility recently conducted research on the benefits today’s female talent cares most about. After surveying 1,000 professional women, we found a full 87% of them said a company’s benefits package was either important or very important to them when evaluating a job offer.

The presence — or lack thereof — of certain benefits also had a noticeable impact on respondents’ likelihood to stay at an employer. Given that, when a worker leaves a company, it can cost 33% of their annual salary to replace them, ensuring benefits packages are up to snuff is crucial for companies that want to avoid turnover.

Not all benefits are created equal, though. If the package at your company seems outdated, it’s possible you could actually be driving top talent away. So, we spoke to thought leaders — from CEOs to heads of HR — to find out which benefits and policies send a red flag to job seekers that an organization is behind the times. If your company’s handbook includes any of the following eight policies, it’s possible you’re seen as outdated, according to experts.

Check out our accompanying article highlighting the 10 benefits and policies any modern workplace should have on Extra Crunch.

1. Paid maternity leave is offered — but other leave benefits aren’t.

Image via Getty Images / Aleutie

Considering at least 40% of middle- and large-sized U.S. companies still offer zero paid maternity leave to employees, we’re not saying this benefit isn’t worth having. But as Sarah Morgan, a Senior HR Director of SafeStreets USA, said, to stop at a paid maternity leave benefit is to fail to acknowledge our expanding understanding of families and the ways those families need to be supported.

“The definition of family is changing, and people are living longer,” Morgan said. “Employees need more than just time away from work when they have a baby or someone dies. They also need time for school-aged children, aging parents, deployed spouses and even pets…when they need this time, they should not have to choose between their loved ones and financial hardship.”

2. There’s a gym reimbursement benefit.

Again, at face value, this isn’t exactly the worst benefit for a company to offer. The problem, as Tasia Duske, CEO of Museum Hack, put it, is that too many companies see a gym membership credit as checking off their “employee wellness” box in full.

“What if an employee wants to join a yoga studio, or what if they want a massage instead? Especially with millennial employees, defining what’s ‘healthy’ varies from person to person,” Duske said. “A smart benefit to provide is a Healthy Lifestyle Credit where there’s a lot more flexibility and no judgment. Employees can use their credit to pay for a visit to the dentist, tai chi lessons, to see a therapist or anything in between.”

3. Employees are beholden to a set time and place to work.

A lack of flexibility is one of today’s biggest tell-tale signs of an outdated employer, something Matthew Ross, Co-owner and COO of The Slumber Yard, spoke to. “We don’t have a set time employees need to be in the office by and we frequently allow them to work from home, coffee shops and sometimes even bars for a change of scenery,” Ross said.

“I know how mentally draining it can be to sit down at the same desk all day, so it’s nice when employees are able to leave and work from different locations. I believe this helps keep the work fresh and boosts overall morale.”

4. There’s a strict dress code.

Image via Getty Images / TatianaKrylova

Unless a uniform is legitimately required for a role, companies that mandate strict employee dress codes should seriously rethink these policies, said Greg Kuchcik, VP of HR at Zeeto.io. “Almost all companies have moved to a business casual at most with a lot of companies moving to no dress code altogether,” Kuchcik said.

“If you have strong HR/management and trusted employees, there is no reason that you can’t allow your workers to be comfortable all day, every day.” Nicole Green, HR and Employee Engagement Manager at Perfect Search Media, echoed this. “Casual dress can lead to an environment that is more open-minded and allows for focus on ideas over a dress code,” she said.

5. There are policies that restrict employees’ social media use.

Not long ago, it wasn’t uncommon for companies to have set policies in place that regulated employees’ use of and access to social media platforms. But now, such a policy makes a company look outdated, as Lucas Group’s Chief People Officer, Carolina King, said.

“I certainly feel that limiting employee’s access to social media is a thing of the past and detrimental to a company’s ability to attract top talent,” King said. “I also think when companies do not offer bring your own device (cell phone) programs or policies, they feel behind the times.”

6. Performance reviews are the only policy for sourcing employee feedback.

Research shows that 75% of the causes for employee turnover are preventable. But companies that remain married to an outdated model of performance review-based feedback miss out on opportunities to address those causes. “Performance reviews are often the only official opportunity for an employee to share concerns, ask questions, and have a conversation with a manager,” Vivek Kumar, a recruiter, said.

“However, performance reviews are also used by companies to determine bonuses and raises, which restricts employees from speaking freely and without fear of consequences. Implementing a system of continuous employee feedback is an excellent replacement for an uncomfortable, high-pressure quarterly or yearly performance review.”

7. There’s an official bereavement leave benefit or policy.

Image via Getty Images / Nataliia Kostiukova

On the surface, bereavement leave may seem like a humanitarian benefit for employers to offer. But by enforcing a set number of days for this kind of leave, companies are engaging in a form of employee hand-holding that has no place in the modern working world, said Cindy Harvey, CEO of Amelia Dee.

“Instead of dictating how long it should take someone to recover from an illness or to grieve, these policies should be more flexible, empower managers and employees to have conversations, and do what is right for the person and situation,” Harvey said. “Doing this also supports positive employee mental health and wellness practices in the workplace, two critical issues in workplaces today.”

8. There’s unlimited PTO.

A policy of flexibility, as referenced earlier, is crucial for any employer that wants to remain relevant today. An increasingly trendy benefit in this space is unlimited paid time off; but research around the detriments of this policy may soon make it an outdated offering, argued Samuel Johns, HR Specialist and Office Manager at Resume Genius.

“On the face of it, unlimited PTO is a blessing, since an employee can theoretically take off the time they need to recenter and recharge themselves. However, recent 180-degree about-faces by several companies have revealed that unlimited PTO policies are unworkable, since employees end up toiling away with less PTO than they would using a standard PTO system,” Johns said.

“At Resume Genius, we do offer unlimited PTO, but we also have a minimum PTO requirement of 10 days a year. On top of that, managers are notified if their team members haven’t taken a day off in the last six months, and are asked to schedule them some much-deserved time off.”

Check out our accompanying article highlighting the 10 benefits and policies any modern workplace should have on Extra Crunch.

At its re:Mars conference, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos took the stage today to be “interviewed” by Jenny Freshwater, Amazon’s director of forecasting. As any AWS machine learning tool could have forecasted, having an employee interview her boss didn’t lead to any challenging questions or especially illuminating answers, but Bezos did get a chance to talk about a variety of topics, ranging from business advice to his plans for Blue Origin.

We can safely ignore the business advice, given that Amazon’s principle of “disagree and commit” is about as well known as it could be, but his comments about Blue Origin, his plans for moon exploration and its relationship to startups were quite interesting.

He noted that we now know so much more about the moon than ever before, including that it does provide a number of resources that make it a good base for further space exploration. “The reason we need to go to space is to save the Earth,” he said. “We are going to grow this civilization — and I’m talking about something that our grandchildren will work on — and their grandchildren. This isn’t something that this generation is able to accomplish. But we need to move heavy industry off Earth.”

Building up the infrastructure for this is obviously expensive, though. “Infrastructure is always expensive,” he said. “Amazon was easy to start in 1994 with a small amount of capital because the transportation system already existed.” Similarly, the payment system, in the form of credit cards, was already in place, as was the telecom network.

“You cannot start an interesting space company today from your dorm room. The price of admission is too high and the reason for that is that the infrastructure doesn’t exist,” Bezos noted. “So my mission with Blue Origin is to help build that infrastructure, that heavy lifting infrastructure that future generations will be able to stand on top of the same way I stood on top of the U.S. Postal Service and so on.”

The obvious follow-ups here would have been about how Amazon is now building its own logistics network and replacing the U.S. Postal Service with its own delivery services.

Once the Amazon space station opens, Bezos expects that the first deliveries will be of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. “It’s going to be a small selection but a very important one,” he joked.

Either way, though, it’s clear that Bezos does see Blue Origin as having a vital mission for the future of mankind. In that, he shares his passion with Elon Musk and other space entrepreneurs.

It’s worth noting that Amazon already offers satellite ground stations as a service and is looking to offer space-based internet access with Project Kuiper.

Bezos’s fireside chat was briefly interrupted by a protestor, who urged the billionaire to “save the animals.” As far as conference protests go, this one was pretty mild, though the fact that the protestor made it onto the stage probably means that Amazon will step up security at its next events and that somebody on the security team is going to have to disagree and commit.