Specializing in Computer Repair, Networking, Internet Solutions, Web Designing, Hybrid App Designing and Windows Operating systems.
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
An overview of how data-driven tech and analytics are reshaping Hollywood's creative development process and market research during the pandemic — Coronavirus and the era of stay-at-home binge-watching is accelerating the entertainment industry's reliance on analytics and data to target …
Jake Slobe / Clay and Milk:
Iowa-based Growers Edge, which provides a range of data-driven fintech and analytics tools for the agricultural industry, has closed $40M Series B — Growers Edge has announced the close of a $40 million Series B round of financing to accelerate the development of its financial technology products …
Aroon Deep / MediaNama:
Zomato says its FY 2020 revenue was $394M, up 105% YoY, and EBITDA loss reached $293M vs. $277M in FY 2019, as Zomato Gold/Pro had 1.7M subscribers as of March — “While FY19 saw hyper-competition between four well-funded food delivery players, FY20 ended with a two player market structure …
Elise Reuter / MedCity News:
Evidation Health, whose tech helps aggregate health data from wearables and other sources for virtual clinical trials, raises $45M Series D led by B Capital — Evidation Health, a startup that provides technology for virtual clinical trials, raised $45 million in series D funding.
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
China's biggest chipmaker SMIC, a key player in the country's semiconductor ambitions, kicked off a $6.6B share sale on Tuesday in Shanghai — - SMIC, China's biggest chipmaker, kicked off a major 46.28 billion yuan ($6.6 billion) share sale on Tuesday. — The contract semiconductor manufacturer …
Ian Walker / Kotaku:
Ubisoft announces multiple senior executive departures, including its chief creative officer and Canadian studios head, amid company-wide misconduct allegations — Serge Hascoët has resigned as Ubisoft's chief creative officer after weeks of damning accounts of sexual misconduct throughout …
Leah Rosenbaum / Forbes:
Telemedicine service Doctor on Demand raises $75M Series D led by General Atlantic, bringing the total raised to $240M — Although many industries have suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic, telemedicine is one sector that isn't slowing down. The demand for virtual doctor's appointments …
Jason Koebler / VICE:
A look at the gray market around repairing ventilators, where technicians use homemade dongles and software secretly shared within the community — As COVID-19 surges, hospitals and independent biomedical technicians have turned to a global grey-market for hardware and software …
With the release of “Hamilton” on Disney+, Jordan and Darrell finally got to watch the musical biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton — albeit in recorded form, rather than live on-stage.
And as we discuss on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, they were pretty delighted by what they found. Not that a Broadway hit that’s won virtually every award really needs defenders at this point — but the Disney+ version is beautifully filmed, and it’s nice to see that five years later, “Hamilton” still works for new viewers.
Anthony, meanwhile, saw the show back in 2015 and has listened to the soundtrack many, many times. But after years of reading about “Hamilton” rather than experiencing it directly, Disney+ gave him a chance to rediscover how virtuosic and entertaining the show is from beginning to end, with one memorable song after another.
We did have a few reservations, about composer Lin-Manuel Miranda’s decision to cast himself as Hamilton, and about the show’s politics — we certainly appreciated its attempt to reclaim the founding story of the United States as a story for immigrants and people of color, but as others have pointed out, downplaying slavery and uncritically celebrating the creation of America’s financial institutions feels a bit strange, at least in 2020.
You can listen to our review 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 follow us on Twitter or send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)
If you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Introduction
0:21 “Hamilton” review
30:52 “Hamilton” spoiler discussion
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.
In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.
This week, we’re digging into the news of a possible TikTok ban in the U.S. and how that’s already impacting rival apps. Also, both Android and iOS saw beta launches this week — a near-ready Android 11 beta 2 and the public beta of iOS 14. We also look at the coronavirus’ impact on the app economy in Q2, which saw record downloads, usage and consumer spending. In other app news, Instagram launched Reels in India, Tinder debuted video chat and Quibi flounders while Pokémon GO continues to reel it in.
Apple release iOS 14 public beta
Image Credits: Apple
The much-anticipated new version of the iOS mobile operating system, iOS 14, became available for public testing on Thursday. Users who join the public beta will be able to try out the latest features, like the App Library, Widgets and smart stacks, an updated Messages app, a brand-new Translate app, biking directions in Apple Maps, upgraded Siri and various improvements to core apps like Notes, Reminders, Weather, Home, Safari and others.
When iOS 14 launches to the general public, it may also include support for QR code payments in Apple Pay, according to a report of new assets discovered in the code base.
Alongside the public beta, developers received their second round of betas for iOS 14, iPadOS 14 and other Apple software.
Google’s efforts in speeding up Android updates has been good news for Android 10
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:
Signal's new feature that allows users to store certain data on their servers for recovery purposes has some security experts threatening to stop using the app — The popular encrypted app is now going to store your contacts in the cloud. Experts are worried this compromises users' privacy.
Welcome to The Exchange, an upcoming weekly newsletter featuring TechCrunch and Extra Crunch reporting on startups, money, and markets. You can sign up for it here to receive it regularly when it launches on July 25th. You can email me about it here, or talk to me about it on Twitter. Let’s go!
Ahead of parsing Q2 venture capital data, we got a look this week into the VC world’s take on making deals over Zoom. A few months ago it was an open question whether VCs would simply stop making new investments if they couldn’t chop it up in person with founders. That, it turns out, was mostly wrong.
This week we learned that most VCs are open to making remote deals happen, even if 40% of VCs have actually done so. This raises a worrying question: If only 40% of VCs have actually made a fully remote deal, how many deals happened in Q2?
Judging from my inbox over the past few months, it’s been an active period. But we can’t lean on anecdata for this topic; The Exchange will parse Q2 VC data next week, hopefully, provided that we can scrape together the data points we need to feel confident in our take. More soon.
As TechCrunch reported Friday, some startups are delaying raising capital for a few quarters. They can do this by limiting expenses. The question for startups that are doing this is what shape they’ll be in when they do surface to hunt for fresh funds; can they still grow at an attractive pace while trying to extend their runway through burn conservation?
But there’s another option besides waiting to raise a new round, and not raising at all. Startups can raise an extension to their preceding deal! Perhaps I am noticing something that isn’t a trend, or not a trend yet, but there have been a number of startups recently raised extensions lately that caught my eye. For example, this week MariaDB raised a $25 million Series C extension, for example. Also this week Sayari put together $2.5 million in a Series B extension. And CALA put together $3 million in a Seed extension. Finally, across the pond Machine Labs put together one million pounds in another Seed extension this week.
I don’t know yet how to numerically drill into the available venture data to tell if we’re really seeing an extension wave, but do let me know if you have any notes to share. And, to be completely clear, the above rounds could easily be merely random and un-thematic, so please don’t read into them more deeply than that they were announced in the last few days and match something that we’re watching.
On the public markets front, the news is all good. Tech stocks are up in general, and software stocks set some new record highs this week. It’s nearly impossible to recall how scary the world was back in March and April in today’s halcyon stock market run, but it was only a few months back that stocks were falling sharply.
The return-to-form has helped a number of companies go public this year like Vroom, Accolade, Agora, and others. This week was another busy period for startups, former startups, and other companies looking to go out.
In quick fashion to save time, this week we got to see GoHealth’s first IPO range, nCino’s second (more on the two companies’ finances here), learned that Palantir is going public (it’s financial history as best we can tell is here), and even got an IPO filing (S-1) from Rackspace, as it looks towards the public markets yet again.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. You can read it every morning on Extra Crunch, and now you can receive it in your inbox. Sign up for The Exchange newsletter, which drops every Friday starting July 25.
The IPO waters are so warm that Lemonade is still up more than 100% from its IPO price. So long as growth companies that are miles from making money can command rich valuations, expect companies to keep running through the public market’s door.
There’s fun stuff on the horizon. Coinbase might file later this year, or in early 2021. And the Airbnb IPO is probably coming within four or five quarters. Gear up to read some SEC filings.
The coolest funding round of the week was obviously the one that I wrote about, namely the $2.2 million that MonkeyLearn put together from a pair of lead investors. But other companies raised money, and among them the following investments stood out:
That’s The Exchange for the week. Keep your eye on SaaS valuations, the latest S-1 filings, and the latest fundings. Chat Monday.
Sarah Emerson / OneZero :
Pinterest's moderation approach, which blocks content at the search query level, rather than removing it entirely, lets some objectionable content remain — The moderation oversight is a result of hiding rather than deleting illicit content — Pinterest, a website best known for inspiration boards …
The Mac is getting a major update in Apple’s own processors. But, what about changes to future Macs that aren’t just about ditching Intel chips? From touch to speed to Thunderbolt, Macworld’s Michael Simon and Computerworld’s Ken Mingis join Juliet to discuss their predictions about the future of the Mac.
To read this article in full, please click here
This was the week airborne transmission became a big deal in the public discussion about covid-19. Over 200 scientists from around the world cosigned a letter to the World Health Organization urging it to take seriously the growing evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted through the air. WHO stopped short of redefining SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes covid-19) as airborne but did acknowledge that more research is “urgently needed to investigate such instances and assess their significance for transmission of COVID-19.”
“I honestly don’t know what people are waiting for,” says microbiologist Chad Roy of Tulane University in the US. “It doesn’t take WHO coming out to make a proclamation that it’s airborne for us to appreciate this is an airborne disease. I don’t know how much clearer it needs to be in terms of scientific evidence.”
What does “airborne” really mean in this context? It’s basically an issue of size. We’re pretty sure that SARS-CoV-2 is spread through tiny droplets that contain viral particles capable of leading to an infection. For a virus to be airborne, however, means a few different things, depending on the expert you’re talking to. Typically it means it can spread via inhalation over long distances, perhaps even through different rooms, of small particles known as aerosols.
“That’s why when you ask some of the professionals if the virus is airborne, they’ll say it’s not, because we’re not seeing transmission over those sorts of distances,” says Lisa Brosseau, a retired professor of public health who still consults for businesses and organizations.
There is also some debate on what we mean by “aerosol.” The droplets that carry viral particles through the air can come in all sorts of sizes, but while the larger ones will drop quickly to the ground or other surfaces, the smaller ones (just a few microns across) can linger in the air for a while, giving them a chance to be inhaled. The word is mostly used to describe these smaller particles, although Brosseau would prefer the term “aerosol transmission” to cover the entire gamut of inhalable viral particles being expelled into the air—large and small alike.
If SARS-CoV-2 is airborne, it’s far from the only disease. Measles is notorious for being able to last in the air for up to two hours. Tuberculosis, though a bacterium, can be airborne for six hours, and Brosseau suggests that coronavirus superspreaders (people who seem to eject a larger amount of the virus than others) disseminate the virus in patterns that recall the infectiousness of tuberculosis.
The evidence that this type of transmission is happening with SARS-CoV-2 arguably already exists. Several big studies point to airborne transmission of the virus as a major route for the spread of covid-19. Other studies have suggested the virus can remain in aerosolized droplets for hours. One new study led by Roy and his team at Tulane shows that infectious aerosolized particles of SARS-CoV-2 could actually linger in the air for up to 16 hours, and maintain infectivity much longer than MERS and SARS-CoV-1 (the other big coronaviruses to emerge this century).
We still don’t know what gives SARS-CoV-2 this airborne edge. “But it may be one reason this is a pandemic, and not simply a small outbreak like any other coronavirus,” says Roy.
Whether the virus is airborne isn’t simply a scientific question. If it is, it could mean that in places where the virus has not been properly contained (e.g., the US), the economy needs to be reopened more slowly, under tighter regulations that reinforce current health practices as well as introducing improved ones. Our current tactics for stopping the spread won’t be enough.
Roy would like to see aggressive mandates on strict mask use for anyone leaving home. “This virus sheds like crazy,” he says. “Masking can do an incredible amount in breaking transmission. I think anything that can promote the use of masking, to stop the production of aerosols in the environment, would be helpful.”
Brosseau, however, says that though masks can limit the spread of larger particles, they are less helpful for smaller ones, especially if they fit only loosely. “I wish we would stop relying on the idea that face coverings are going to solve everything and help flatten the curve,” she says. “It’s magical thinking—it’s not going to happen.” For masks to really make a difference, they would need to be worn all the time, even around family.
Brosseau does believe the evidence is trending toward the conclusion that airborne transmission is “the primary and possibly most important mode of transmission for SARS-CoV-2.” She says, “I think the amount of time and effort devoted to sanitizing every single surface over and over and over again has been a huge waste of time. We don’t need to worry so much about cleaning every single surface we touch.” Instead, the focus should be on other factors, like where we spend our time.
One of the biggest questions we still have about covid-19 is how much of a viral load is needed to cause infection. The answer changes if we think it is aerosols that we need to worry about. Smaller particles won’t carry as large a viral load as bigger ones, but because they can linger in the air for much longer, it may not matter—they’ll build up in larger concentrations and get distributed more widely the longer an infected person is around to expel aerosolized virus.
The more people you have coming in and out of an indoor space, the more likely it is that someone who is infected will show up. The longer those infected individuals spend in that space, the higher the concentration of virus in the air over time. This is particularly bad news for spaces where people congregate for hours on end, like restaurants, bars, offices, classrooms, and churches.
Airborne transmission doesn’t necessarily mean these places must stay closed (although that would be ideal). But wiping down surfaces with disinfectant, and having everyone wear masks, won’t be enough. To safely reopen, these spots will not just need to reduce the number of people allowed inside at any given moment; they will also need to reduce the amount of time those people spend there. Increasing social distancing beyond six feet would also help keep people safer.
Ventilation needs to be a higher priority too. This is going to be a big problem for older buildings that usually have worse ventilation systems, and areas with a lot of those might need to remain closed for much longer. The impact of asymptomatic spread (transmission by people who don’t feel ill) and superspreaders only compounds the problem even further. But research conducted by the US Department of Homeland Security has shown that in the presence of UV light, aerosolized particles of the size the Tulane researchers studied would disappear in less than a minute. A number of businesses have begun deploying UV-armed robots to disinfect hospital rooms, shopping malls, stores, public transit stations, and more.
For many places, considerable delays in economic reopening might ultimately be the price of getting the virus under control. Otherwise the kind of thing that happened when a single open bar in Michigan led to an outbreak of more than 170 new cases could become commonplace.
For Brosseau, the best strategy is simply to behave as we did in the early days of lockdown—stay home, and avoid coming into contact with anyone you don’t live with. And if you have to leave home, she says, “all I can say is spend as little time as possible in an enclosed space, in an area that’s well ventilated, with as few people as possible.”
Song Jingli / KrASIA:
China-based Kuaidian, a storytelling app that lets users read novels in text message format and watch visual dramas, raises ~$100M Series C led by Sequoia China — The novel community Kuaidian has attracted 5 million daily active users since its founding in 2017. — 3d ago
