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BMW continues to bet on the (Azure) cloud https://ift.tt/2tIHbGJ Earlier this week, at MWC Barcelona, BMW announced its newest in-car AI initiative: BMW Natural Interaction. The idea here is to use cameras, microphones and other sensors in the car to allow you to have more natural interactions with the car, either through voice or gestures. The marquee feature here is the ability to point at something outside the car and get more information about it or, if it’s a restaurant, have the BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA) make a reservation for you. These systems will work by combining in-car AI with cloud technologies — and for those, BMW continues to bet on Microsoft’s Azure cloud. After the announcement, I sat down with Christoph Grote, BMW Group’s senior VP for electronics. I admit that a lot of what I saw in the demo felt a bit futuristic, but Grote noted that everything he showed off during his presentation is more or less production-ready. “I don’t think I would’ve dared to stand up there if any of the things I showed today were a utopia,” he told me. “All of this is in series production and some of it is already available as part of the BMW OS 7 release. But the major work we are doing, looking ahead to the iNext [electric SUV], is about gaze, head pose and gesture tracking and combing those with the other modalities. But everything we showed today is going to go into production.” In practice, this means that BMW will use two cameras: a wide-angle camera behind the rear-view mirror that can track the gestures of both the driver and front-seat passenger and one behind the dashboard that only looks at the driver through the steering wheel and recognizes when their eyes blink, where their eyes look and their head pose. As Grote noted, figuring out where you are looking is not exactly easy. The camera sees your hands in relation to the car. That’s pretty straightforward. But the car, too, is situated somewhere in space, and for this to work, that localization has to be very precise, and the digital map has to be very detailed, too. “GPS isn’t enough for this,” Grote said, and noted that the company plans to use the car’s forward-facing camera to gather additional information that helps localize the car in space based on comparing the image to the digital map. The AI smarts that power these mapping features run right in the car — and in many ways, these features also lay the groundwork for self-driving cars, which obviously need highly detailed maps, too. In many ways, this work is a continuation of BMW’s work on its IPA in-car assistant. “There, we use Azure Cognitive Service and we plan to integrate these new modalities (like gaze and gesture tracking) with the same technology. And that’s important for these multi-modal systems. […] We have a great partnership with Microsoft and we expect that’ll continue.” Grote also noted that BMW has a long history of working in the cloud, thanks to many years of experience in offering its connected car services. “We don’t think of the car as an isolated client that connects to some service in the cloud, but that we also see these connected cars as a swarm that has collective intelligence.” Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity is one of the hot topics in the car industry right now — especially given the advent of 5G with its low-latency connectivity — and BMW does have its own point of view here. For Grote, V2X systems that use the cellular network and connect to the cloud have major advantages over those that try to connect cars directly. These cloud-connected systems, he argues, are easier to maintain and they are able to translate between different standards or — in the long run — integrate different generations of this system to ensure that cars from different manufacturers can talk to each other. “A cellular-based system is forward-looking, maintainable, secure and the better foundation that guarantees future development efforts versus a standard that’s 20 years old, from a time when the carriers were not interested in machine-to-machine traffic at all.” BMW continues to bet on the cloud for many of its newest tech developments. Among car manufacturers, it’s obviously not alone here. Daimler recently announced that it has moved its big data platform to the cloud, for example. And in many ways, that move makes sense. Running online services isn’t a core competency for many of these companies, and even if they are experienced at running their own data centers by now, this isn’t what allows them to differentiate their cars in a highly competitive market. That energy is better spent on building applications, not managing them. The large cloud providers also offer global coverage, and redundancies are hard and expensive to build. Digital Trends via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com February 26, 2019 at 01:36PM
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The Dark Knight Returns in These Seriously Cool DC Collectibles From New York Toy Fair https://ift.tt/2GYqf7f DC Collectibles brought out lots and lots of Batman for this year’s New York Toy Fair. But don’t worry, some other characters got a chance to shine too and there’s a Harley Quinn “statue” you have to see to believe. Digital Trends via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com February 26, 2019 at 01:15PM
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Boaty McBoatface’s new Antarctic mission will be its toughest yet https://ift.tt/2BWiPOi Boaty McBoatface’s Third Voyage sounds more like the closing entry in a Pixar movie trilogy than it does an impressive oceangoing feat set to take place later this year. In fact, it refers to the upcoming third mission for Autosub Long Range, the vessel nicknamed “Boaty McBoatface” as the consolation prize in a British public vote. The challenging mission will see Boaty explore the ocean cavity beneath Thwaites Glacier in the Amundsen Sea sector of western Antarctica. Set to take place this fall, the mission will examine the effects of warming ocean waters on the glacier. This melting could trigger an unstable retreat of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which may result in sea levels rising by more than two meters. Data gathered by the good ship McBoatface will be used to produce more robust forecasts of future sea level rise. “As with the previous mission where Autosub Long Range was sent beneath an Antarctic ice shelf, the major challenge is that presented by the presence of the ice shelf itself,” Peter Davis, a physical oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey, told Digital Trends. “Once Autosub Long Range has entered the ice shelf cavity, there is no ability for it to communicate with the ship, nor is it able to surface to find its location via GPS. Therefore it must accurately navigate for the duration of its mission, ensuring it will exit the cavity and be recovered to the supporting research vessel. Whilst in the cavity it must also think for itself, avoiding any obstacles presented by the seabed and the ice base.” Adding to Boaty’s headaches is the freezing ocean temperatures, which will severely impact the autonomous vessels’ battery life. As a result, the mission must be precisely planned to ensure that the vehicle retains enough power to complete its scientific objectives, while also being able to navigate and propel itself. “By sending Autosub Long Range beneath Thwaites Glacier, we are sampling a critical area of the ocean that cannot be reached using traditional observation methods from ocean-based research ships,” Davis continued. “The information it gathers will give a unique picture of the ocean conditions within the ice shelf cavity. Autosub Long Range will measure the temperature and the salinity of the ocean beneath Thwaites Glacier, as well as the current speeds and the amount [of] turbulence in the water. These observations will help us better understand how Thwaites Glacier is responding to the changing climate, as well as what processes are setting the rate at which it is melting from beneath.”
Digital Trends via Digital Trends https://ift.tt/2p4eJdC February 26, 2019 at 01:06PM
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Get personal training at home with a NordicTrack C500 and a free year of iFit https://ift.tt/2U4J505 Most peoples’ New Year’s resolutions include something related to fitness and health, which are worthy goals but can be tough to stick to – particularly in the winter months when outdoor activities are less enjoyable. If you’re among the disciplined few who haven’t abandoned these resolutions, though, then good in-home workout equipment like the NordicTrack C500 treadmill can make a big difference, and now you can score a free year of personalized iFit coaching software when you buy a new C500. Although old-fashioned outdoor running remains as popular an exercise activity as ever, a stationary treadmill offers a few major advantages: First, it lets you work out in the comfort (and warmth) of your own home, meaning that your workout schedule isn’t at the mercy of the daylight hours or the weather. Many people also simply prefer the quiet and privacy of their homes for working out instead of doing so in a public gym setting. Second, treadmills are lower impact and easier on your joints than running outside on concrete or asphalt, which is likely where you’ll be running if you live in an urban area, an activity that’s notoriously tough on your knees, hips, and ankles. Third, modern treadmills like the NordicTrack C500 boast a plethora of high-tech features and settings that let you personalize and customize your workout to suit you. The NordicTrack C500 has a six-inch multicolor LCD monitor, giving you a heads-up display of your current progress and other fitness metrics, while two stereo speakers let you plug in your music and jam while you run. NordicTrack’s FlexSelect Cushioning protects your joints from the impact of running, and its EasyLift assisted folding lets you easily fold the deck up when the treadmill is not in use. Yet what’s most notable about the NordicTrack C500 treadmill is its compatibility with iFit software, which gives you personalized daily fitness goals as well as professional coaching. You can select preprogrammed workouts designed by professional athletes, or enjoy a virtual studio session run by iFit-certified trainers. The C500’s built-in software also lets you run through a range of virtual destinations on Earth, automatically adjusting the treadmill’s incline to match the real-world terrain of those locations. The NordicTrack C500 rings in at $599 with free home shipping from Walmart, which is a good price for a stationary treadmill with features like this (and still just a fraction of what something like a Peloton treadmill would cost you). For a limited time, however, you can also score a year-long subscription to iFit’s professional coaching software – a $468 value – totally free with your order.
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Digital Trends via Digital Trends https://ift.tt/2p4eJdC February 26, 2019 at 01:06PM
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Makers of the AK-47 assault rifle have built a kamikaze drone as their sequel https://ift.tt/2BRpl9a You know how movie trailers often include some variation of the lines “from the makers of” or “from the people who brought you”? Well, the same goes for a crazy new kamikaze drone project — only, in this case, it’s brought to you by the Russian weapons manufacturer Kalashnikov, aka the people who introduced the world to the iconic AK-47 assault rifle. Kalashnikov’s newest creation, a “high-precision attack unmanned aerial system” called KUB-UAV, was shown off recently at the United Arab Emirates’ International Defense Exhibition and Conference (IDEX). The drone is capable of remaining airborne for up to 30 minutes, during which time it can hit speeds that max out at 80 mph. When it comes time to pull off an attack, it is able to target and accurately kamikaze enemy troops with an explosive payload weighing up to 6.6 pounds. The KUB-UAV isn’t the world’s first weaponized drone, of course. In the U.S., Florida-based Duke Robotics has developed a drone called Tikad, which boasts a plethora of semiautomatic weapons, in addition to a 40mm grenade launcher. Duke Robotics has already received an initial order from the Israeli Ministry of Defense and is in conversations with other military departments around the world. Other autonomous weapons and killer drones include everything from self-driving subs and warships to the (in)famous Predator drones used for drone strikes. The use of these tools has frequently caused concern, with many calling for the banning of “killer robots” in warfare scenarios. According to the creators of the KUB-UAV drone, it will simple to operate, highly effective, and cheap. Sergey Chemezov, chairman of Russia’s state-owned Rostec arms manufacturer, which owns a majority stake in Kalashnikov, says that the weapons marks “a step toward a completely new form of combat.” It’s not yet clear exactly who will be among the KUB-UAV’s earliest customers or its exact price point compared with other comparable smart bombs. One thing that’s for sure, though: If it’s able to have anywhere close to the impact of Kalashnikov’s AK-47 — which has sold around 100 million units since its creation in 1949 — it will be a major player in 21st-century warfare.
Digital Trends via Digital Trends https://ift.tt/2p4eJdC February 26, 2019 at 01:06PM
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2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo Spyder revealed ahead of 2019 Geneva Motor Show https://ift.tt/2ICWgEf The Lamborghini Huracán Evo debuted in January with a host of updates, including a more powerful engine and new tech directions. It was only a matter of time before the Huracán Spyder convertible got the Evo treatment, so it’s no surprise that it will makes its public debut at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. Like the Huracán Evo coupe, changes for the Spyder start with relatively minor tweaks to the exterior styling. A new front bumper is paired with a new rear fascia with prominent central exhaust tips, similar to the Huracán Performante, and a wide diffuser evoking Huracán race cars. A new rear spoiler completes the changes. The convertible roof can be raised or lowered in 17 seconds at speeds up to 31 mph, according to Lamborghini. The 5.2-liter V10 engine makes the same 640 horsepower and 442 pound-feet of torque as the Huracán Evo coupe. The mid-mounted V10 spins all four wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. Lamborghini claims the Huracán Evo Spyder will do zero to 62 mph in 3.1 seconds, which is 0.2 second slower than the coupe. Top speed is expected to be somewhere north of 200 mph. The chassis benefits from rear-wheel steering and torque vectoring, which should allow for more precise handling. A suite of sensors called Lamborghini Piattaforma Inerziale 2.0 carries over from the Huracán Evo coupe. The sensors provide data to the car’s various systems, from the active suspension to the traction control, to help keep the driver from crashing. Also helping in this area is Lamborghini Dinamica Veicolo Integrata, a central computer that adjusts different vehicle parameters on the fly. It’s so smart that it can actually predict the driver’s next move, according to Lamborghini. The Huracán Evo Spyder also gets the same upgraded infotainment system as the coupe, including an 8.4-inch touchscreen, gesture control, and Apple CarPlay. The 2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo Spyder makes its public debut at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show, with deliveries scheduled to begin this spring. Pricing starts at $287,400, or about $26,000 more than the Huracán Evo coupe. Expect the rear-wheel drive Huracán models to get the all-wheel drive Evo models’ tech upgrades at some point in the coming months.
Digital Trends via Digital Trends https://ift.tt/2p4eJdC February 26, 2019 at 01:06PM
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Facebook to boost California internet options with Terragraph 5G Wi-Fi https://ift.tt/2ICQdzx Facebook is expanding its wireless internet access projects within the borders of the U.S. with a technology known as Terragraph. Set to make see wider usage in Alameda, California, by the middle of the year, it will offer 5G internet access via the 60GHz spectrum distributed over short-distance cell towers. Although it will be offered to individual households, too, a number of companies have already announced plans to adopt the high-speed technology. As powerful as fiber connected internet can be, built up urban areas and long-distance rural townships require massive up-front investment in underground cables to take best advantage of it. Wireless standards, like cellular data connections, offer a way around that, but coverage isn’t always ideal. What Facebook is proposing is a combination of ever-expanding fiber networks and 5G connectivity via localized 60GHz transmitters and receivers which can be attached to any existing infrastructure. Facebook also promises that they don’t require Right of Way permissions, allowing for far faster roll out. The first area to see the deployment of this technology is Alameda, California, which as Engadget points out, is one of a number of suburban areas across the U.S. which struggles with access to high-speed internet. Common Networks, a Silicon Valley startup that already has some experience in working with this kind of wireless technology, is using Facebook’s Terragraph to offer gigabit packages to home users for $50 per month. It will increase the availability of this service throughout Alameda by mid-2019. Other pilot programs are currently underway in San Jose and Qualcomm is said to be adding Terragraph support within its chipsets, meaning a wider array of manufacturers could deploy Terragraph technology toward the end of 2019. If Common Networks’ experiment proves successful, this seems like a likely outcome. Terragraph is Facebook developed, but is otherwise open source technology, making adoption of it easier for manufacturers than more proprietary wireless technologies. As Wired explains, Terragraph’s connectivity means that it doesn’t require an enormous investment in infrastructure to launch in new markets, making it far less of a risk for companies to increase the areas they cover. That, in turn, increases competition, which should be of great benefit to internet users in harder to reach areas. Especially if Facebook continues to develop its internet drone technology.
Digital Trends via Digital Trends https://ift.tt/2p4eJdC February 26, 2019 at 01:06PM
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India’s entrepreneurial future https://ift.tt/2GMTLgX Few countries have more entrepreneurial potential than India. It’s home not just to the wave of IT offshoring firms of the 1990s and early 2000s, but also to some of the most interesting unicorn tech startups in the world, including Freshworks, Paytm, Oyo and of course Flipkart, which sold to Walmart last year for $16 billion. India though is also at something of an economic crossroads. Unlike China, which as we discussed yesterday faces a conflict between open entrepreneurship and strict party control in its next stage of development, India must build up its indigenous startups while also opening up to the global economy. That economic balancing act will be tough. As James Crabtree, a long-time writer of the Financial Times based in Mumbai, argues in his book The Billionaire Raj, India faces a triple threat of “inequality and the new super-rich, crony capitalism, and the travails of the industrial economy” as it seeks to move the country into middle-income status. Crabtree, who built up access among India’s traditional business elite over many years, sees a nation that is starving for more government capacity. India has transitioned in a few short decades from a moribund economy languishing under a sclerotic and byzantine bureaucratic model (sometimes referred to as the “license raj”) into an increasingly open and competitive market for goods and services. Yet, success outside of a scant few industries — namely IT services — has been undergirded by political access and the trading of favors. Crabtree chronicles a whole crop of entrepreneurs from across the country in industries as far afield as mining to liquor to aircraft to show the constant intermixing of Indian business and Indian politics. That crony capitalism is at the heart of what he dubs today’s “billionaire raj” — a government that isn’t for the ultra-rich so much as it lacks any capacity whatsoever to stand up to its worst excesses and corruption. The book is one part travelogue, one part analysis, and one part biographical bookshelf that together paint a complicated portrait of India’s growth ambitions and challenges to scale. Given where India’s fortunes have been made the past few decades, the book mostly ignores the tech industry, save for fleeting mentions scattered about. But I asked Crabtree in an interview last week where he saw the country headed, and how technology might underpin that. “People thought that India was going to become the next hot market for Silicon Valley tech money after China, but it doesn’t look like that will be the case,” he explained. Unlike China, which created friction in market entry for foreign tech companies, India has been reasonably open. “The biggest search engine in India is Google, the biggest social network is Facebook,” he noted. “They don’t make much money in India, but they have spectacular user growth.” “When I lived in Mumbai, there was a big tech investment wave in the after wave of the Alibaba IPO,” he explained. “There were these great hopes that India would follow the sort of hockey stick growth” seen in China. Yet, the country’s demographics don’t back that up. “India has a tiny middle class — 10-20 million” using a reasonable definition of the term “middle class.” That group is simply not large enough to support the valuation dreams underpinning some of India’s most-discussed unicorns. “Growing users is really easy, but growing revenues is just much more challenging,” he said. The challenge ahead for India is that a form of economic nationalism is increasingly popular in Delhi. We have covered a bit of this change around data localization / sovereignty, but it is certainly much wider than those policies. “I think there is a slow but steady trend toward closure that is partly to do with India’s domestic politics” and partly due to international climate, Crabtree explained. The thinking is that, “China has produced Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu [… but] India hasn’t produced any major global stars yet.” Fueling that rift is a sense that foreign tech giants “don’t pay much in the way of tax, they are not Indian companies” and that they “haven’t behaved particularly well.” Crabtree was referring specifically to Facebook’s Free Basics program, which became deeply controversial in the country, although those feelings are not limited to just Facebook. India has a massive election coming up in just a few weeks, which will decide whether current Indian prime minister Narendra Modi stays in power. Beyond just policy, Crabtree sees a major challenge for all foreign tech companies, but particularly those operating social networks. “The stakes are very high for how social media manages the stresses and strains of a competitive and potentially nasty Indian political campaign,” he said. “If they are blamed for something that went wrong… this would be immensely damaging.” India has the potential to be the single largest democratic free market economy in the world. But it needs to simultaneously cut down on its corruption, create jobs for millions of new entrants to the labor economy every year, stand up a new generation of digital-first behemoths, all the while balancing the needs of an incredibly diverse and cacophonous democracy buffeted by global markets and tastes. That’s ultimately a tall order, but if India wants to migrate from a “billionaire raj” to an “entrepreneur raj,” it will have to do all of that — at once. Talking about borders: Talent-friendly immigration driving tech north of the borderWritten by Arman Tabatabai Yesterday, we talked about the growing difficulty of the H-1B visa application and approval process in the US, and how it threatens America’s long-term entrepreneurial edge. In a prime example of the connection between immigration policy and technology leadership — the FT put out a deep-dive analysis on the rapidly growing Toronto tech and startup scene, with much of the expansion attributable to Canada’s talent-friendly immigration policies. Canada applies the “give grads a visa with their diploma” approach many have preached for in the US, providing multi-year work visas to foreign students upon graduation. And while the US continues to make the individual application process more difficult, Canada has streamlined its process. Applications for highly-skilled workers, as well as their families, are processed within just a couple weeks. While there are clearly several intertwined factors behind the growth of Toronto as a tech hub, talent is certainly one of them, with the city having added nearly 100,000 jobs in a five-year period. Toronto offers a case-in-point precedent of how cities can use immigration to gain a technological edge, and why the United States’ misdirected crackdown is undermining its own. Intel cancels agreement with China chipmaker in fight for next generation chip dominanceWritten by Arman Tabatabai Intel continues to shift its strategy as it tries to improve its position for next-generation chip leadership. At the MWC conference in Barcelona, Intel announced that it was terminating a multi-year partnership with one of China’s premier state-backed mobile chipmakers, Unisoc. As part of the original agreement announced roughly a year ago‚ Intel would share its new 5G modem chips with Unisoc to help Intel increase its lagging market share in China, while providing Unisoc technological know-how needed for it to compete with more-advanced competitor offerings. Like many breakups, the two sides are saying the decision was mutual and not a result of the political tension between the US and Chinese governments. However, the Nikkei Asian Review reports that insiders say the US’ recent harsh tone with Chinese tech and semiconductor companies definitely played a role in the decision. As we discussed yesterday, Intel has a lot of catching up to do after years of complacency and will now have to find a different avenue to make up ground in the Chinese market. Unisoc is also certainly feeling the pain of the lost knowledge transfer, as market share can disappear quickly in a highly competitive industry where IP is often the secret sauce. The cancellation of what seemed to be a mutually beneficial deal reinforces the fact that the fight for next-generation semiconductor dominance is just as much political as it is financial, if not more so. Other news from around the worldFacebook’s censors are struggling at workCasey Newton at The Verge offered us a deep-dive into the horrific working conditions and post-traumatic stress of working as a censor for Facebook and its contractors. While artificial intelligence and advances around computer vision may allow more of this to be automated in the future, Newton brings up a key question: what are we doing right now to help the working-class workers who keep social networks safe for users? Could corporate VC unlock the Japanese startup market?Pavel Alpeyev at Bloomberg has a deep-dive highlighting the rapid expansion of Japanese corporate venture capital. The trend is permeating the country’s largest companies across all industries, with the number of Japanese corporate venture arms increasing by more than 8x since 2015. The Japanese market has traditionally been viewed as an unfriendly environment for startups, but the growing availability of capital and support from Japan’s all-powerful incumbent corporations makes building a company seem more feasible. ~ Written by Arman Tabatabai Mobile usage gender gap reinforces the social obligation for big techLeading mobile companies from around the world have been aggressively competing for ownership of emerging market populations. In a recent analysis, Yomi Kazeem at Quartz Africa highlighted the tremendous gender gap that exists in emerging market mobile usage — with female use up to 30% lower in some cases — which represents a significant untapped user base that Quartz estimates could generate $140 billion in revenue over the next five years. We plan on revisiting the topic of how incumbent tech will unlock growth in the future as we dive into Payal Arora’s book The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West. ~ Written by Arman Tabatabai Obsessions
ThanksTo every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to danny@techcrunch.com. This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York Digital Trends via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com February 26, 2019 at 01:02PM
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FTC creates antitrust task force to monitor tech industry https://ift.tt/2H6nS27 The field of technology and the business practices within it tend to advance faster than regulators can keep up. But the FTC is making a concerted effort with a new 17-lawyer tech task force dedicated to ensuring “free and fair competition” and watching for anticompetitive conduct among technology companies. This isn’t necessarily a precursor to some big action like breaking up a big company or imposing rules or anything like that. It seems to be more a recognition that the FTC needs to be ready to ascertain quickly and move decisively in tech matters, and a crack team of tech-savvy staff attorneys is the way to do it. The Technology Task Force will live under the competition bureau within the FTC, the director of which, Bruce Hoffman, commented as follows in the agency’s announcement:
That it is under this bureau and not the bureau of consumer protection gives a good indicator of its purpose. This won’t be a way for the FTC to, for instance, more closely scrutinize Google or Facebook’s shady user data practices. That said the lawyers are stated to have expertise in “advertising, social networking, mobile operating systems and apps, and platform businesses,” which I doubt they mention for no reason. Instead it is likely to be more focused on investigating and reporting on potential anticompetitive practices that are the potential result of M&A deals or quasi-monopolies like Amazon and Facebook. The fascinating Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox paper from a while back noted all kinds of ways that company slips through loopholes while performing actions that look, walk, and talk like monopolistic ones. But just what exactly constitutes such practices legally speaking is a matter of considerable debate. No doubt the lawyers and their tech fellow, with whom they will consult, will spend a great deal of time sifting through old cases and precedents and seeing what does and doesn’t apply. The team will be performing its own investigations of ongoing and completed mergers, and will also supply investigative services to other branches of the agency. Essentially it’s an indication that the FTC will be taking tech antitrust more seriously going forward, and dedicating more and better organized resources to the task of monitoring the sector. That’s probably not the kind of thing big tech companies like to hear. I’ve asked the agency some questions as far as markets they’ll be watching, behaviors they’re looking for, and so on. I’ll update this post if I hear back. Digital Trends via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com February 26, 2019 at 01:00PM
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theSkimm is launching a daily news podcast offering contextualized, nonpartisan coverage https://ift.tt/2T1ymXO News media company theSkimm is delving further into podcasting, with the launch of its first daily news podcast called Skimm This, set to launch on March 4. Similar to how theSkimm’s morning newsletter helps people keep up with the latest goings-on in the world, the new podcast also aims to help readers quickly understand the news of the day. However, Skimm This will be different from other news podcasts currently on the market, the company says. For starters, it will be released in the evenings – Monday through Friday at 5 PM – in order to reach people hitting the gym after work, commuters on their way home, or those who like to listen to podcasts during dinner prep, among others. It will also not be a round-up of the day’s headlines, like other news podcasts. Instead, Skimm This will focus on around four stories in total over the course of about 10 minutes. The top story will always be a national or international subject, and the podcast’s goal will be to provide more context and clarity around this story to help listeners understand why it’s important. In addition, the company positions itself as a nonpartisan news source that only delivers facts, not opinions. Over half its audience said that’s what they wanted from a podcast, along with making the news relatable and easier to understand, the company notes. Plus, theSkimm’s own data indicated that one-quarter (24%) of its female millennial users use podcasts to listen to news, and among those who do, 60 percent listen every day. This isn’t the first podcast to launch from theSkimm. In February 2018, it launched Skimm’d from the Couch, a weekly podcast series where The Skimm’s co-founders and co-CEOs Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg interview female leaders – like Arianna Huffington, Taraji P. Henson, Whitney Wolfe, Katrina Lake, Reshma Saujani, Martha Stewart and Hoda Kotb – about their path to success. The company also previously invested other media programming, including Skimm’d with… and Get Off the Couch for Facebook, and digital series Sip n’ Skimm. But with Skimm This, the company is making a play to become more of a part of users’ daily routines – one which begins in the morning with the daily email newsletter that now reaches 7 million+ readers, continues throughout the day through theSkimm app calendar integration (which reminds you of important events), and now concludes in the evening with Skimm This. theSkimm says it’s working with podcast and media company Cadence13 on Skimm This, and will distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Google’s Android app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, iHeart and Radio.com. There will also be a “flash briefing” version of Skimm This available at launch, where it will join the existing Daily Skimm briefing available on Alexa and Google Home. The podcasting expansion comes at time when theSkimm’s growth for its newsletter business appears to have leveled off. Last May, when the company reported its $12 million Series C funding round with big names like Shonda Rhimes and Tyra Banks attached, it said its daily newsletter reached around 7 million subscribers. That’s roughly the same figure it’s reporting today. The power of those readers is notable, though. Since announcing the launch of Skimm This in today’s morning newsletter, the new podcast’s trailer shot to No. 1 on iTunes’ charts, in the News & Politics section (according to Podbay.fm data.) Below is the trailer for Skimm This: Digital Trends via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com February 26, 2019 at 12:59PM |
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