Category: Tech news

Breathing down the neck of WeWork is Knotel, which in 2017 raised a Series A round of $25 million, then another round of $70m, and then another $5m in debt. It says it has one million square feet in New York versus WeWork’s four million.
It’s now pushing out internationally. Last year it acquired Ahoy!Berlin, a workspace operator in Berlin, Germany, after setting up an operation in London.
And today it has announced that it has acquired Deskeo, the largest office space rental operation in Paris, catapulting Knotel to become the biggest operator in the city. It is about 10 times bigger than WeWork in the city, according to Amol Sarva, co-founder and CEO of Knotel.
Sarva told me the company will rebrand as Knotel, with senior management staying on. Numbers for the deal have not been released.
Last year Knotel also acquired 42Floors, a commercial real estate search engine in the US to, according to Sarva, get “access to data and technology on over 10 billion square feet of office space.”
Knotel is building what it calls the Agile HQ platform, a way to rent office space for a few hours or a few months without getting stuck in a lease. It positions itself as different from WeWork in that companies are front and centre in the building rather than the brand of Knotel, unlike WeWork which pushes itself as the main brand.

Taxi drivers in major cities in Spain are on strike again to apply pressure for more stringent regulations to control app rivals such as Uber and Cabify which they view as unfair competition.

In Barcelona the taxi sector called an indefinite strike on Friday, using their vehicles to block Gran Vía in the Catalan capital, with protest action carrying on through the weekend and continuing into today.

Taxi drivers in Madrid are also on strike from this morning.

In Barcelona, the strike was called after the Catalan government announced proposals for regulating the vehicle for hire (VTC) sector which include a 15 minute wait time between a passenger booking and being able to take a ride.

The taxi drivers want the wait time to be much longer than that; at least 24 hours.

There were reports of violence during Friday’s action. The Huffington Post said a Cabify driver suffered a panic attack after his car was attacked by a group of protestors. It reports the police used cardiopulmonary resuscitation manoeuvers on the driver to stabilize him.

A journalist for El Pais also posted a video of the attack and resulting damage to the vehicle on Twitter.

The AP reports that local police arrested seven people in connection with the violence.

On Sunday, Elite Taxi BCN, one of the main associations backing the strike action, issued a video of its spokesman, Alberto Álvarez, calling for protestors to keep things peaceful.

The latest strikes follow a summer of action by the sector which also kicked off in Barcelona, also with violent scenes and reports of attacks on VTC drivers.

In that case Uber and Cabify temporarily paused services in the city on safety grounds. The pair do not appear to have stopped their services this time.

Although some VTC drivers have been holding counter protests by parking their vehicles along a stretch of Avenue Diagonal, causing further disruption to the flow of traffic in the city.

The taxi strike in the summer only ended after the government agreed to transfer regulatory competency for the VTC sector to the regions. The Catalan government is the first regional authority to have put forward proposals for regulating VTCs.

But the move devolving regulatory competency has not ended the ‘taxi war’. Far from it; it’s cranking up a gear as taxi associations demand a firewall for their sector by overruling the on-demand convenience of app-based rivals which are counter protesting in the hopes of steering out of a looming regulatory bind.

The latter group argues that imposed wait limits would be unconstitutional because they would go against the general interest of citizens. They also point out that waiting time based regulations have not been successfully enforced anywhere in Europe (London’s TfL proposed a five minute waiting time after a booking back in 2015 but dropped the measure after a public consultation, for instance).

While the taxi sector argues that existing laws aren’t being enforced meaning that a regulated public service is being unfairly undercut and undermined by multinationals that also only bring precarious work, rather than sustainable employment…

In Barcelona the annual Mobile World Congress tradeshow, which takes place in just over a month’s time — bringing an influx of around 100,000 techie visitors — is a strategic ratchet for the taxi industry to pressure authorities. Threats to paralyze the city are at their most politically and economically potent. So there’s plenty of uncertainty about where the latest huelga indefinida will lead.

If wait limits are imposed the VTC sector claims it would result in scores of drivers being put out of work. Commenting on the Barcelona government’s proposals for regulating the sector, an Uber spokesman told us: “Recent developments could have major consequences for drivers as well as the thousands of riders who enjoy new mobility services in the city. We continue to call for dialogue with all local stakeholders, including taxis, to shape the future of urban mobility in Spain together.”

We’ve also reached out to Cabify for comment. Update: A spokesperson told us: “Cabify’s commitment remains the same: We want to offer a mobility service that improves both the life in Barcelona, Madrid as well as in the rest of the cities in which we operate. Cabify has more than 3 million registered users in Spain. We’ve always been opened to work with institutions and the sector to ensure that mobility options [across] Spain are not diminished”.

Unauto VTC, a VTC association, issued a press release on Saturday decrying the blockade of the city and what it dubbed “intolerable levels of violence” by taxi associations, as well as attacking the “absolutely disproportionate” proposed VTC regulations. It also denounced the local government minister in charge of the regulation, Damià Calvet, accusing him of caving in to taxi industry “blackmail”.

“The Catalan Government’s umpteenth caving in to taxi sector blackmail has ensured it will no longer be satisfied with anything other than the disappearance of the VTC sector. We hope the government rectifies this immediately and allows the general interest of the citizens of Catalonia to prevail,” said association president, Eduardo Martín, in a statement (which we’ve translated).

“I wonder what the next thing Barcelona’s taxi sector will be asking for under threat of blocking the Mobile World Congress. Maybe the Metro closes an hour earlier, or that the Aerobus disappears. In view of the attitude of the current Government of the Generalitat it is possible that they will achieve it.”

The city government pointed us to a statement today, from the councillor for mobility and president of metropolitan transport, Mercedes Vidal, calling for an “acceptable” proposal so taxis and VTC drivers do not do the same work.

Chinese authorities have declared the work of He Jiankui, who shocked the scientific community by claiming he successfully created the world’s first gene-edited babies, an illegal decision in pursuit of “personal fame and gain.” Investigators have completed preliminary steps in a probe that began in November following He’s claims and say they will “seriously” punish the researcher for violations of the law, China’s official news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.

He, who taught at Shenzhen’s Southern University of Science and Technology, had led a team to research the gene-editing technique CRISPR since mid-2016 in attempts to treat cancers and other diseases. The incident drew significant attention to the professor’s own biotech startups that are backed by local and overseas investors.

The official probe shows that He fabricated ethics approvals which he used to recruit eight couples to participate in clinical procedures between March 2017 and November 2018. The attempt led to two pregnancies, including one that resulted in the birth of twins and the other embryo yet to be born. Five couples failed to achieve fertilization and one pair dropped out of the experiment.

He’s project has sparked a wave of criticism among scientists across the world. CRISPR is still dangerously unethical at this point for it may cause serious genetic damage. Some researchers have proposed a moratorium on CRISPR until more guidelines become clear while others call for developing safer and more ethical methods to propel the technology forward. Many countries, including the United States and China, prohibit gene-editing of human embryos for reproductive purposes.

Biometric payment card startup Zwipe has swiped $14M to add to an earlier Series B round as it continues to work towards commercializing technology that embeds a fingerprint reader in payment plastic for an added layer of security.

“We are not commercially rolled out yet, we expect that to happen in the second half of this year, starting first in Europe and potentially in the Middle East,” a spokesman told us, saying the financing will be used to scale up the company to prepare for a commercial rollout of a biometric payment card solution in the second half of 2019.

He said it’s also eyeing additional form factors such as wearables down the line, penciling in 2020 for expanding into other devices and verticals.

Although it has yet to push its tech past the pilot stage with payment cards.

“Our technology is currently deployed in pilot programs in Italy, with Intesa Sanpaolo Bank and with 10 different banks across the Middle East,” the spokesman told us. “We have active partnerships globally. In APAC, specifically China and the Philippines, we expect to launch further trials in the near term. In Europe we have piloted with the Bank of Cyprus and expect to launch several more trials in Europe in the first half of 2019.”

Back in 2014, working with MasterCard, it showed off a credit card with an embedded fingerprint reader, seemingly taking a leaf out of Apple’s approach with Touch ID.

The new funding was raised via an offering of 6M new shares, from around 2,300 investors, ahead of a planned listing of the company on Merkur Market, Oslo Børs. Zwipe says the share offer was substantially over-subscribed, and it expects trading to commence on or around January 28. The pre-money valuation of the company is stated as NOK 189 million ($22M).

Commenting on the raise in a statement, CEO Andre Løvestam said: “Zwipe is at the forefront of a global shift towards more secure and convenient contactless payments and the market is primed for growth. We are confident that our industry leading technology and partnerships will secure a strong market position both in the short and long-term. Thanks to the new funding received, we can intensify our efforts to support our customers and partners in ‘making convenience secure’.”

The digital revolution in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, continues to attract big money from investors. Hot on the heels of a $50 million round for Bukalapak, a billion-dollar company helping street stall traders to tap the internet, so Warung Pintar, another startup helping digitize the country’s vendors, has pulled in $27.5 million for growth.

Bukalapak is one of Indonesia’s largest e-commerce services and it began catering to local merchants, those who sell product via road-side kiosks, last year, but eighteen-month-old Warung Pintar is focused exclusively on those vendors.

Bukalapak helps them to gain scale through online orders — it claims to have a base of 50 million registered users in Indonesia — but Warung Pintar digitizes kiosk vendors to the very core. At the most basic level, that means aesthetics; so all Warung Pintar vendors get a bright and colorfully-designed kiosk. They also get access to technology that includes a digital POS, free Wi-Fi for customers, an LCD screen for displays, power bank chargers and more.

It’s a ‘smart kiosk’ concept, essentially.

The project was founded in 2017 by East Ventures, a prolific early-stage investor that has backed unicorns like Tokopedia, Traveloka and Mercari. This new money means that Warung Pintar has now raised just over $35 million from investors to date.

The round — which is a Series B — included participation from existing backers SMDV, Vertex, Pavilion Capital, Line Ventures, Digital Garage, Agaeti, Triputra, Jerry Ng, and EV Growth — the joint fund from East Ventures and Yahoo. They were joined by OVO — a payment firm jointly owned by Indonesian mega-conglomerate Lippo — which has signed on as a new investor and is sure to be highly strategic in nature. OVO works with the likes of Grab, and it is battling to gain a foothold in Indonesia’s fledgling digital payments space, which is tipped to boom among the country’s 260 million population.

These investors are all betting that Warung Pintar can take off and provide greater functionality for street vendors and consumers alike.

The startup is in growth mode right now so it isn’t fully focused on monetization. The only fee is $5,000 from the vendor, which covers the cost of a new prefab kiosk, while all the tech appliances are provided without fee to help kiosk owners engage with the local community. For example, East Ventures noticed that drivers for Go-Jek or Grab tended to hang around the kiosk store near the VC firm’s office and they were curious how to grow engagement to benefit both parties.

“There are going to be a lot of ways to charge and make money,” East Ventures co-founder and managing partner Willson Cuaca told TechCrunch in an interview. “Once we have built enough, we can manage the supply chain and then figure out of how to make money.”

Indeed, monetization might not be via fees to the kiosk owners themselves, explained Cuaca — who is president of Warung Pintar. Since the company maintains touch points with consumers, it is a commodity that can appeal to brands, manufacturers and others when it reaches nationwide scale.

While there has been promising progress and product market fit in Jakarta, Cuaca and his team see significant growth potential still to be realized.

When we spoke to Warung Pintar just under a year ago, it had just raised a seed round and had been in operation for under six months. Today, the business counts 1,150 kiosks in Jakarta. However, it recently opened up in Banyuwangi, East Java, which, alongside other planned expansions, is aimed to increase its reach to 5,000 kiosks before the end of this year, Cuaca said.

There’s no plan for regional expansion at this point, he added.

The business and model is fascinating but it is conceived and executed in Indonesia, that’s to say it isn’t a problem that could be identified, mapped and solved from the U.S, China or other markets. It’s the type of tech and startup that is helping change daily lives in Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country by population. Home-grown solutions have been rare in Southeast Asia, but there are increasing opportunities that only local players can cater to and now the region’s VC corpus is substantial enough to provide the capital needed.

Update: Article corrected to reflect that the company was founded in 2017.

Flexciton, the London-based startup that is using AI to help factories optimise production lines, has raised £2.5 million in funding, in a round led by Backed VC. Also participating is Join Capital and company builder Entrepreneur First. The young company pitched at EF’s 6th London demo day in 2016.

Riding the so-called “Industry 4.0” wave, Flexciton has developed an AI-driven solution to optimise the way manufacturers plan and schedule “multi-step production lines,” which it says is a complex mathematical task faced by all manufacturers. It’s also traditionally quite a manual one, with existing software solutions still leaving a lot of the heavy lifting to humans.

“Running every factory in the world is a plan for that factory’s production,” explains Flexciton co-founder Jamie Potter. “This plan dictates everything which goes on in the factory. Plan well and a factory can be very profitable but plan badly and the same factory could deliver late on customer orders, overspend on equipment and materials and have its margins destroyed”.

Potter says that typically a human manually creates a plan based on their past experience, which isn’t always optimal. “The difference between an Ok plan and the optimal plan is huge for a factory, planning well can save a single factory many millions of pounds per year. The problem is, finding that optimal plan is one of the hardest mathematical problems that exists in the real world”.

Which, of course, is where more machines can help. Flexciton’s AI technology learns from a factory’s data, and Potter says it can understand exactly how that factory works. “It can then search through the trillions of different options to find the most efficient production plan. The results can be staggering too as our technology has shown time and again that it is capable of double-digit performance gains to a factory!” he says.

Already revenue-generating, Flexciton has customers in the textiles, food, automotive and semiconductor sectors. “We love to work with particularly complicated factories. Here the planning problem is the hardest and this is where we add the most value,” says Potter.

To back this up, Flexciton has recruited a number of experts in the field of industrial optimisation and AI. The current Flexciton team has published over 140 peer-reviewed academic papers, which focus on the practical application of this technology in eight different industrial use cases. To boot, Flexciton’s senior optimisation scientist, Dr. Giorgos Kopanos, has even published a book on the subject.

The US-China tension over Huawei is leaving telecommunications companies around the world at a crossroad, but one spoke out last week. Telus, one of Canada’s largest phone companies showed support for its Chinese partner despite a global backlash against Huawei over cybersecurity threats.

“Clearly, Huawei remains a viable and reliable participant in the Canadian telecommunications space, bolstered by globally leading innovation, comprehensive security measures, and new software upgrades,” said an internal memo signed by a Telus executive that The Globe and Mail obtained.

The Vancouver-based firm is among a handful of Canadian companies that could potentially leverage the Shenzhen-based company to build out 5G systems, the technology that speeds up not just mobile connection but more crucially powers emerging fields like low-latency autonomous driving and 8K video streaming. TechCrunch has contacted Telus for comments and will update the article when more information becomes available.

The United States has long worried that China’s telecom equipment makers could be beholden to Beijing and thus pose espionage risks. As fears heighten, President Donald Trump is reportedly mulling a boycott of Huawei and ZTE this year, according to Reuters. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that US federal prosecutors may bring criminal charges against Huawei for stealing trade secrets.

Australia and New Zealand have both blocked local providers from using Huawei components. The United Kingdom has not officially banned Huawei but its authorities have come under pressure to take sides soon.

Canada, which is part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network alongside Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US, is still conducting a security review ahead of its 5G rollout but has been urged by neighboring US to steer clear of Huawei in building the next-gen tech.

China has hit back at spy claims against its tech crown jewel over the past months. Last week, its ambassador to Canada Lu Shaye warned that blocking the world’s largest telecom equipment maker may yield repercussions.

“I always have concerns that Canada may make the same decision as the US, Australia and New Zealand did. And I believe such decisions are not fair because their accusations are groundless,” Lu said at a press conference. “As for the consequences of banning Huawei from 5G network, I am not sure yet what kind of consequences will be, but I surely believe there will be consequences.”

Last week also saw Huawei chief executive officer Ren Zhengfei appear in a rare interview with international media. At the roundtable, he denied security charges against the firm he founded in 1987 and cautioned the exclusion of Chinese firms may delay plans in the US to deliver ultra-high-speed networks to rural populations — including to the rich.

“If Huawei is not involved in this, these districts may have to pay very high prices in order to enjoy that level of experience,” argued Ren. “Those countries may voluntarily approach Huawei and ask Huawei to sell them 5G products rather than banning Huawei from selling 5G systems.”

The Huawei controversy comes as the US and China are locked in a trade war that’s sending reverberations across countries that rely on the US for security protection and China for investment and increasingly skilled — not just cheap — labor.

Canada got caught between the feuding giants after it arrested Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who’s also Ren’s daughter, at the request of US authorities. The White House is now facing a deadline at the end of January to extradite Meng. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump are urging Beijing to release two Canadian citizens who Beijing detained following Meng’s arrest.

Shareholders are suing Elon Musk over that “taking Tesla private” tweet, and just got the right to subpoena Banks and Grimes.

WIRED’s Peter Rubin joins the Gadget Lab podcast to talk about his experience wearing Nike’s newest self-adjusting sneakers. Plus: Nitasha Tiku weighs in on mandatory arbitration at tech companies.

Days after Snap announced the departure of its CFO, reports have emerged that the company’s HR chief was asked to leave following an internal investigation late last year that had led to the firing of its global security head.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Snap fired global security head Francis Racioppi late last year after an investigation uncovered that he had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with an outside contractor he had hired. After the relationship ended, Racioppi terminated the woman’s contract, the report says.

Racioppi denied any wrongdoing in a comment to the Journal. A report from Cheddar also adds that one of Racioppi’s assistants was fired for aiding in an attempt to cover up the scandal.

The investigation’s findings reportedly contributed to CEO Evan Spiegel asking the company’s HR head Jason Halbert to step down. Halbert announced his plans to leave the company this week.

While today’s news pins two high-profile executive departures to a single incident, Snap’s executive team has seemed to be losing talent from its ranks at a quickening pace.

Snap did not comment on the reports.

Reports emerged today that the FTC is considering a fine against Facebook that would be the largest ever from the agency. Even if it were 10 times the size of the largest, a $22.5 million bill sent to Google in 2012, the company would basically laugh it off. Facebook is made of money. But the FTC may make it provide something it has precious little of these days: accountability.

A Washington Post report cites sources inside the agency (currently on hiatus due to the shutdown) saying that regulators have “met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine.” We may as well say here that this must be taken with a grain of salt at the outset; that Facebook is non-compliant with terms set previously by the FTC is an established fact, so how much they should be made to pay is the natural next topic of discussion.

But how much would it be? The scale of the violation is hugely negotiable. Our summary of the FTC’s settlement requirements for Facebook indicate that it was:

• barred from making misrepresentations about the privacy or security of consumers’ personal information;
• required to obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before enacting changes that override their privacy preferences;
• required to prevent anyone from accessing a user’s material more than 30 days after the user has deleted his or her account;
• required to establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program designed to address privacy risks associated with the development and management of new and existing products and services, and to protect the privacy and confidentiality of consumers’ information; and
• required, within 180 days, and every two years after that for the next 20 years, to obtain independent, third-party audits certifying that it has a privacy program in place that meets or exceeds the requirements of the FTC order, and to ensure that the privacy of consumers’ information is protected.

How many of those did it break, and how many times? Is it per user? Per account? Per post? Per offense? What is “accessing” under such and such a circumstance? The FTC is no doubt deliberating these things.

Yet it is hard to imagine them coming up with a number that really scares Facebook. A hundred million dollars is a lot of money, for instance. But Facebook took in more than $13 billion in revenue last quarter. Double that fine, triple it, and Facebook bounces back.

If even a fine 10 times the size of the largest it ever threw can’t faze the target, what can the FTC do to scare Facebook into playing by the book? Make it do what it’s already supposed to be doing, but publicly.

How many ad campaigns is a user’s data being used for? How many internal and external research projects? How many copies are there? What data specifically and exactly is it collecting on any given user, how is that data stored, who has access to it, to whom is it sold or for whom is it aggregated or summarized? What is the exact nature of the privacy program it has in place, who works for it, who do they report to and what are their monthly findings?

These and dozens of other questions come immediately to mind as things Facebook should be disclosing publicly in some way or another, either directly to users in the case of how one’s data is being used, or in a more general report, such as what concrete measures are being taken to prevent exfiltration of profile data by bad actors, or how user behavior and psychology is being estimated and tracked.

Not easy or convenient questions to answer at all, let alone publicly and regularly. But if the FTC wants the company to behave, it has to impose this level of responsibility and disclosure. Because, as Facebook has already shown, it cannot be trusted to disclose it otherwise. Light touch regulation is all well and good… until it isn’t.

This may in fact be such a major threat to Facebook’s business — imagine having to publicly state metrics that are clearly at odds with what you tell advertisers and users — that it might attempt to negotiate a larger initial fine in order to avoid punitive measures such as those outlined here. Volkswagen spent billions not on fines, but in sort of punitive community service to mitigate the effects of its emissions cheating. Facebook too could be made to shell out in this indirect way.

What the FTC is capable of requiring from Facebook is an open question, since the scale and nature of these violations are unprecedented. But whatever they come up with, the part with a dollar sign in front of it — however many places it goes to — will be the least of Facebook’s worries.

CEO Elon Musk says the layoffs will help the electric car maker as it leans into the tough job of building mass-market cars.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the company’s Cortana digital assistant should be available on smart speakers made by rivals like Amazon and Google.

An economist studying pay records as part of an ongoing lawsuit found the software company paid women 14 percent less annually than men doing similar jobs.

If you’ve ever enthusiastically sent your spit off in the mail, you were probably anxious for whatever unexpected insights the current crop of DNA testing companies would send back. Did your ancestors hang out on the Iberian peninsula? What version of your particular family lore does the science support?

Most people who participate in mail-order DNA testing don’t think to question the science behind the results — it’s science after all. But because DNA testing companies lack aggressive oversight and play their algorithms close to the chest, the gems of genealogical insight users hope to glean can be more impressionistic than most of these companies let on.

To that point, Charlsie Agro, host of CBC’s Marketplace, and her twin sister sent for DNA test kits from five companies: 23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA and Living DNA.

As CBC reports, “Despite having virtually identical DNA, the twins did not receive matching results from any of the companies.” That bit shouldn’t come as a surprise. Each company uses its own special sauce to analyze DNA, so it’s natural that there would be differences. For example, one company, FamilyTreeDNA, attributed 14 percent of the twins’ DNA to the Middle East, unlike the other four sets of results.

Beyond that, most results were pretty predictable — but things got a bit weird with the 23andMe data.

As CBC reports:

According to 23andMe’s findings, Charlsie has nearly 10 per cent less “broadly European” ancestry than Carly. She also has French and German ancestry (2.6 per cent) that her sister doesn’t share.

The identical twins also apparently have different degrees of Eastern European heritage — 28 per cent for Charlsie compared to 24.7 per cent for Carly. And while Carly’s Eastern European ancestry was linked to Poland, the country was listed as “not detected” in Charlsie’s results.

The twins shared their DNA with a computational biology group at Yale, which verified that the DNA they sent off was statistically pretty much identical. When questioned for the story, 23andMe noted that its analyses are “statistical estimates” — a phrase that customers should bear in mind.

It’s worth remembering that the study isn’t proper science. With no control group and an n (sample size) of one set of twins, nothing definitive can be gleaned here. But it certainly raises some interesting questions.

Update: A 23andMe spokesperson provided the following statement to TechCrunch to contextualize the results in question:

The variance in Charlsie’s and Carly’s 23andMe results are primarily within the “Broadly European” estimate. This category captures segments our algorithm could confidently identify as European, but not confidently classify more precisely, into countries for example. It’s not inconsistent for one twin to have more “Broadly European” than the other. It means that for one individual the algorithm was not confident enough to make more granular predictions. For example, for one twin we were able to identify 2.6% French and German, whereas for the other that portion of the genome was assigned to Broadly European.

The company also emphasized “the distinction that [23andMe’s] ancestry testing is different from our health report testing, which is regulated by the FDA and meets the agency’s standards for accuracy and clinical validity.”

Twin studies have played a vital role in scientific research for ages. Often, twin studies allow researchers to explore the effects of biology against those of the environment across any number of traits — addiction, mental illness, heart disease and so on. In the case of companies like 23andMe, twin studies could shed a bit of light on the secret algorithms that drive user insights and revenue.

Beyond analyzing the cold, hard facts of your DNA, companies like 23andMe attract users with promises of “reports” on everything from genetic health risks to obscure geographic corners of a family tree. Most users don’t care about the raw data — they’re after the fluffier, qualitative stuff. The qualitative reporting is where companies can riff a bit, providing a DNA-based “personal wellness coach” or advice about whether you’re meant to be a morning person or a night owl.

Given the way these DNA services work, their ancestry results are surprisingly malleable over time. As 23andMe notes, “because these results reflect the ancestries of individuals currently in our reference database, expect to see your results change over time as that database grows.” As many non-white DNA testing customers have found, many results aren’t nearly as dialed in for anyone with most of their roots beyond Europe. Over time, as more people of color participate, the pool of relevant DNA grows.

Again, the CBC’s casual experiment is by no means definitive science — but neither are DNA testing services. For anyone waiting with bated breath for their test results, remember that there’s still a lot we don’t know about how these companies come to their conclusions. Given the considerable privacy trade-off in handing over your genetic material to big pharma through a for-profit intermediary, it’s just some food for thought.