Specializing in Computer Repair, Networking, Internet Solutions, Web Designing, Hybrid App Designing and Windows Operating systems.
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Despite cutting a big portion of its staff in March, Vroom is back pitching investors. Yesterday, the site for buying and selling used cars filed to raise $70 million in new equity funding.
Vroom has already secured $30 million of that $70 million target, signaling confidence from investors that it’ll become profitable and beat out key competitors in the space, like Carvana and Shift.
The startup wants to make the process of buying a used car as easy as ordering a pizza. With more than 3,000 cars for sale on the site, Vroom delivers directly to its customers’ doorsteps. Since it was founded in 2013, Vroom has brought in $320 million from General Catalyst, T. Rowe Price, Altimeter and others, reaching a valuation of $655 million in July 2017.
We’ve reached out to the company for comment.
As part of the March layoffs, Vroom, which is headquartered in New York City, also shuttered its Dallas, Texas and Whitestown, Indiana locations. The official number of employees Vroom let go is unclear, though when news of the layoffs broke, the company listed 845 employees on its website. Today, the site list “600+” or about 30% fewer employees.
The cuts, the company said, were part of a restructuring that would allow Vroom to focus on profitability. This is what the company had to say in March:
“While Vroom’s business is healthy and financially stable, we’re always looking to align our resources to fulfill our long-term vision and deliver on our mission,” the statement said. “In sharpening our focus on profitability, we recently made some adjustments to our strategy that has impacted our headcount. While decisions like this are never easy, we are putting the company in a better position to become the leader in online car buying and continue to invest in future areas of growth.”
It’s not surprising Vroom is back in the fundraising game. Buying and selling cars is a capital-intensive business.
Vroom’s competitors have similarly raised a lot of capital. Carvana brought in more than $300 million in equity funding, as well as $400 million in debt, before hitting the stock markets in 2017. Shift has raised roughly $110 million to date. Beepi, a cautionary tale in the business of selling used cars online, landed $150 million in VC funding, then failed to sell its business twice and ended up selling for parts to multiple buyers, including Vroom.
Renesas, Japan-based automotive chip company, is in late stage talks to acquire US-based wireless chip maker Integrated Device Technology, sources say for $6B+ — Once-troubled Japanese chipmaker is on the hunt in US — TOKYO — Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Renesas Electronics wants …
Baidu launches EZDL, a platform that lets users build custom machine learning models using a drag-and-drop interface and without writing any code — Without the technical know-how and the right tools, training machine learning algorithms can be an exercise in frustration.
Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, there has been burgeoning awareness of the hate speech on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. While activists have pressured these companies to improve their content moderation, few groups (outside of the German government) have outright sued the platforms for their actions.
That’s because of a legal distinction between media publications and media platforms that has made solving hate speech online a vexing problem.
Take, for instance, an op-ed published in the New York Times calling for the slaughter of an entire minority group. The Times would likely be sued for publishing hate speech, and the plaintiffs may well be victorious in their case. Yet, if that op-ed were published in a Facebook post, a suit against Facebook would likely fail.
The reason for this disparity? Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which provides platforms like Facebook with a broad shield from liability when a lawsuit turns on what its users post or share. The latest uproar against Alex Jones and Infowars has led many to call for the repeal of section 230 – but that may lead to government getting into the business of regulating speech online. Instead, platforms should step up to the plate and coordinate their policies so that hate speech will be considered hate speech regardless of whether Jones uses Facebook, Twitter or YouTube to propagate his hate.
Section 230 is considered a bedrock of freedom of speech on the internet. Passed in the mid-1990s, it is credited with freeing platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube from the risk of being sued for content their users upload, and therefore powering the exponential growth of these companies. If it weren’t for section 230, today’s social media giants would have long been bogged down with suits based on what their users post, with the resulting necessary pre-vetting of posts likely crippling these companies altogether.
Instead, in the more than twenty years since its enactment, courts have consistently found section 230 to be a bar to suing tech companies for user-generated content they host. And it’s not only social media platforms that have benefited from section 230; sharing economy companies have used section 230 to defend themselves, with the likes of Airbnb arguing they’re not responsible for what a host posts on their site. Courts have even found section 230 broad enough to cover dating apps. When a man sued one for not verifying the age of an underage user, the court tossed out the lawsuit finding an app user’s misrepresentation of his age not to be the app’s responsibility because of section 230.
Of course, section 230 has not meant that hate speech online has gone unchecked. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter all have their own extensive policies prohibiting users from posting hate speech. Social media companies have hired thousands of moderators to enforce these policies and to hold violating users accountable by suspending them or blocking their access altogether. But the recent debacle with Alex Jones and Infowars presents a case study on how these policies can be inconsistently applied.
Jones has for years fabricated conspiracy theories, like the one claiming that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax and that Democrats run a global child-sex trafficking ring. With thousands of followers on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, Jones’ hate speech has had real life consequences. From the brutal harassment of Sandy Hook parents to a gunman storming a pizza restaurant in D.C. to save kids from the restaurant’s nonexistent basement, his messages have had serious deleterious consequences for many.
Alex Jones and Infowars were finally suspended from ten platforms by our count – with even Twitter falling in line and suspending him for a week after first dithering. But the varying and delayed responses exposed how different platforms handle the same speech.
Inconsistent application of hate speech rules across platforms, compounded by recent controversies involving the spread of fake news and the contribution of social media to increased polarization, have led to calls to amend or repeal section 230. If the printed press and cable news can be held liable for propagating hate speech, the argument goes, then why should the same not be true online – especially when fully two-thirds of Americans now report getting at least some of their news from social media. Amid the chorus of those calling for more regulation of tech companies, section 230 has become a consistent target.
But if you need convincing as to why the government is not best placed to regulate speech online, look no further than Congress’s own wording in section 230. The section enacted in the mid-90s states that online platforms “offer users a great degree of control over the information that they receive, as well as the potential for even greater control in the future as technology develops” and “a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.”
Section 230 goes on to declare that it is the “policy of the United States . . . to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet.” Based on the above, section 230 offers the now infamous liability protection for online platforms.
From the simple fact that most of what we see on our social media is dictated by algorithms over which we have no control, to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to increased polarization because of the propagation of fake news on social media, one can quickly see how Congress’s words in 1996 read today as a catalogue of inaccurate predictions. Even Ron Wyden, one of the original drafters of section 230, himself admits today that drafters never exempted an “individual endorsing (or denying) the extermination of millions of people, or attacking the victims of horrific crimes or the parents of murdered children” to be enabled through the protections offered by section 230.
It would be hard to argue that today’s Congress – having shown little understanding in recent hearings of how social media operates to begin with – is any more qualified at predicting the effects of regulating speech online twenty years from now.
More importantly, the burden of complying with new regulations will definitely result in a significant barrier to entry for startups and therefore have the unintended consequence of entrenching incumbents. While Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter may have the resources and infrastructure to handle compliance with increased moderation or pre-vetting of posts that regulations might impose, smaller startups will be at a major disadvantage in keeping up with such a burden.
The answer has to lie with the online platforms themselves. Over the past two decades, they have amassed a wealth of experience in detecting and taking down hate speech. They have built up formidable teams with varied backgrounds to draft policies that take into account an ever-changing internet. Their profits have enabled them to hire away top talent, from government prosecutors to academics and human rights lawyers.
These platforms also have been on a hiring spree in the last couple of years to ensure that their product policy teams – the ones that draft policies and oversee their enforcement – are more representative of society at large. Facebook proudly announced that its product policy team now includes “a former rape crisis counselor, an academic who has spent her career studying hate organizations . . . and a teacher.” Gone are the days when a bunch of engineers exclusively decided where to draw the lines. Big tech companies have been taking the drafting and enforcement of their policies ever more seriously.
What they now need to do is take the next step and start to coordinate policies so that those who wish to propagate hate speech can no longer game policies across platforms. Waiting for controversies like Infowars to become a full-fledged PR nightmare before taking concrete action will only increase calls for regulation. Proactively pooling resources when it comes to hate speech policies and establishing industry-wide standards will provide a defensible reason to resist direct government regulation.
The social media giants can also build public trust by helping startups get up to speed on the latest approaches to content moderation. While any industry consortium around coordinating hate speech is certain to be dominated by the largest tech companies, they can ensure that policies are easy to access and widely distributed.
Coordination between fierce competitors may sound counterintuitive. But the common problem of hate speech and the gaming of online platforms by those trying to propagate it call for an industry-wide response. Precedent exists for tech titans coordinating when faced with a common threat. Just last year, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube formalized their “Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism” – a partnership to curb the threat of terrorist content online. Fighting hate speech is no less laudable a goal.
Self-regulation is an immense privilege. To the extent that big tech companies want to hold onto that privilege, they have a responsibility to coordinate the policies that underpin their regulation of speech and to enable startups and smaller tech companies to get access to these policies and enforcement mechanisms.
Amazon says Alexa now comes integrated with over 20,000 devices from 3,500 brands, up from the 4,000 devices from 1,200 brands in January — Amazon executive Daniel Rausch stood onstage before a crowd of hundreds at Berlin's IFA tech show to share a few big numbers about Alexa.
GoPro’s latest action camera isn’t expected to be revealed until later this month, but we just caught a pretty good glimpse of the thing. The Hero 7 made an early appearance as part of an in-store display posted by an Imgur user (though the link appears to no longer be active) and spotted by The Verge.
There’s not a lot to go on, save for a few display images on top of a display of older Hero models. The shots feature three different colors — black, white and silver — and note that the devices are waterproof up to 10 meters. That’s the same as the Hero 6.
There also appear to be two distinct SKUs — one with a simple front-facing screen (the black model) and the other without. Likely there will be a price gulf between the two, as well. That’s something the company has done in the past with the line. Really, there’s not much in the way of revelations here.
Introduced roughly this time last year, the Hero 6 was capable of shooting 4K video at 60 FPS and boasted a custom built GP1 processor. The action camera has long been GoPro’s bread and butter and has, in fact, become synonymous with the brand. Of course, plenty of other companies have tried their hands at competing (and often cheaper) devices, causing the company to diversify its offerings.
In the case of the Karma drone, however, that didn’t go according to plan, causing the company to reduce its headcount and redouble its efforts on its core business.
Imagine you get a monthly paycheck on the 15th of the month but your bills come in on the 1st of the month. Between the 15th and 1st you must set a portion of your check aside to pay bills. This becomes a complicated budgeting equation. How much can I spend today vs how much do I need to set aside?
In a perfectly rational world people would reduce their consumption by the amount needed to afford their bills and have money left over to make it to the next payday. Sadly, this isn’t what happens. When income and bills are farther apart, we struggle to make the math work.
Researchers Brian Baugh and Jialan Wang found that financial shortfalls – payday loans and bank overdrafts – happen 18% more when there is a greater mismatch between the timing of someone’s income and the bills they owe.
We come up short.
Baugh offers some reasoning: When we get paid, we spend money. More money than usual. Research from Arna Olafsson and Michaela Pagel supports this. They find that both poor and rich households respond to the receipt of income, with the poorest households spending 70 percent more when they get paid than they would on an average day and the richest households spending 40 percent more. This inclination to spend more on payday makes the monthly budget harder to balance – and sometimes makes it unable to balance at all.
Many fintech companies are starting to address pay period timing, in hopes they can close the gap between income and consumption needs. Apps like Even, Earnin and PayActive provide people with instant access to their paycheck. Gig economy employers like Uber and Lyft have features that allow drivers to cash out immediately after they drive. For people who would otherwise get paid on a monthly schedule, this is critical. Jesse Shapiro of Harvard found that food stamp recipients consume 10 to 15 percent fewer calories the week before food stamps are disbursed. Even a few days matter. In Baugh’s study, the difference between a paycheck period of 35 days vs a paycheck period of 28 days resulted in 9% more instances of financial distress.
The question we should be asking now is what is the optimal timing for pay periods? Too long between checks causes hardship, but how short should pay periods become? These fintech companies are offering to “Make Any Day Payday” with promises that people can “Get your paycheck anytime you want.” While this smooths the gap between pay periods, given Olassof’s research, it may also serve to increase spending if everyday is payday.
To dive deeper into this problem, our team sought to understand what employees preferred. As a reminder, our preferences don’t always represent what’s best for us. You may want to eat that chocolate cake, but that doesn’t mean it will help you with your summer dieting goals. However, we were curious: do people have the intuition that more frequent pay periods are better, and how frequent is optimal? To do this we asked 384 people making less than median income ($30,000 a year) to tell us their preferred pay schedule. Using Google Consumer Surveys, we gave them six payment schedules to choose from: Annual, Monthly, Bi-weekly, Weekly, Daily or Hourly.
What should people say? If everyone acts rationally, we would expect people to say they want to get paid hourly – immediately after working. It’s their money and they would be best off with unfettered access to it.
This is not what we found. Instead, people prefer to get paid on a bi-weekly or weekly schedule. Aggregating everyone’s responses, people preferred bi-weekly (37.2%), followed by weekly (26.6%).
Why aren’t more people choosing hourly or daily? While we can’t be sure, one guess is that Baugh’s findings ring true. Weekly and biweekly paychecks can act as a self control device for spending. If paydays were every day, they may be more tempted to spend on non-critical items, leaving less money for bills. Weekly and biweekly paychecks also serve as a way to fix the misalignment of income and bills that Baugh cites drives overdrafts and payday loans. Our team interviewed 40 people in Fresno, California and found this to be a popular budgeting strategy – one paycheck is used for the family car payment and one is used for rent.
When we break out responses by income, we find some correlational differences across income groups. People reporting less than $6,000 income (50% below poverty line) are more likely to opt for an immediate pay schedule. As people’s income level rises above poverty (or part time status), the preference for weekly and bi-weekly pay schedules increases.
We also asked people to tell us how they would describe their personal need for money when paying their bills over the past year. No surprise, but the more people felt they needed money for immediate bills (or feeling scarce) the higher the demand for more frequent paychecks (hourly or weekly).
The verdict?
More research is needed to determine the effects of the growing trend to offer instant access to your paycheck. These apps can bridge critical gaps for people living paycheck to paycheck, but they may also have some detrimental effects if Baugh and Olafsson’s findings hold. If apps help people make everyday payday, and each payday results in higher spending, the end of the month may be much harder to get to.
Key insights for companies trying to improve people’s financial lives
There were few new announcements in Gaming at IFA 2018. a few notable exceptions , most companies used their space to showcase their already existing product lines.
Here is a run down of the best things on show for gamers at IFA 2018.
Note: This article will be updated as the conference goes on.
The announcement with the most buzz at IFA 2018 was Acer’s new gaming chair. The “Thronos” was only unveiled to press in the days leading up to IFA and was absent for the rest of the conference. Here is what we know:
Standing at over 1.5 meters tall and capable of sustaining 3 27” gaming monitors, the Thronos is imposing. Black steel, accented in blue or white, cage the user in a n adjustable chair capable of leaning back to 140 degrees. The bottom of the mount contains space for a Predator PC case, and also dynamic response to in game sounds. In short, you will feel every in game impact.
The concept of all-in-one gaming chairs is nothing new. The Thronos seems to have struck a chord and the idea of a self contained “gaming cave” has arrived to stay.
There are no details as to release date or retail price at present. Rumors put the cost at up to $5000 dollars, making this already niche product even more exclusive. That said – serious gamers are unlikely to let price get in the way of what seems to be the ultimate gaming experience.
Acer also showcased their new Predator XB273K monitor. Aimed specifically at gamers and their needs, it comes with all the features you would expect of a high end monitor. With a resolution of 3840 x 2160 and a refresh rate of 144Hz it promises great image quality.
A budget conscious alternative to the Predator monitor comes in the form of the Nitro XV273K. Aimed at giving a high budget feel at a better price (yet to be announced), it comes in several forms. The 3 announced variations are the XV273K, XV273U (both 27” IPS^3 displays, and XF272U (WQHD).
With each model featuring Acer’s VisionCare(TM) tech, even the lower range models seem a pretty good prospect for the budget minded gamer. The XB273K with be available at EU 1299 during the fourth quarter of 2018.
Razer were promoting a trio of peripherals under the slogan “Raise the Level Cap”. What this meant in practice was a hands on experience of their new gaming mouse, keyboard and headset. Each was newly presented at IFA 2018.
The new Kraken headset was designed with both quality and comfort in mind. An inline controller on the USB cable controls not only volume, but bass level – something they were keen to point out is unique at this price point.
Sound is taken care of through 2 balanced drivers per ear designed to give equal response across all volumes for accurate positioning. The Kraken headset is also the first to make use of THX spatial audio. The virtual positional audio system gives a far greater depth to directional audio, and from the small demo provided is a marked improvement to other budget headsets.
Retailing at $99, the headset certainly had the feel of something more expensive, and the design around the eyes is designed to keep the user cool. Notched ear padding for glasses wearers and a 3.5mm jack input into the USB adapter show that this headset has been thoroughly thought out with user comfort and practicality in mind.
The Black Widow Elite keyboard brings a new programmable system to the table. A mod key gives the user a second keyboard layer which can be assigned to any key combination or macro. Media keys have also been added to the top right of the keyboard along with a notched radial dial and button. While they are designed as media and volume keys, they are fully programmable from Razer’s Synapse softtare controller. On board keyboard memory can store these macros making up to 5 custom keysets plug and play regardless of what computer you plug into.
Razer have also modified their switches, adding walls to them stopping any key wobble or false hits. The effect this had was impressive, as running your finger across the keyboard caused no sideways movement at all.
Again the thought and comfort are apparent here, with an easy to adjust magnetically attached full leather wrist pad, and a cable channel to route the cable out from either side of the keyboard. The previous Black Widow Elite retailed at $179.99, and while the new edition is cheaper, $169.99 is still a high price for many. This keyboard is feature packed, and while it’s impossible to tell from a few hands on minutes, seems worth it.
Initially released in 2010, the Razer Mamba Mouse was originally touted as indistinguishable from wired mice. The 2018 update ups the ante again, with an improved battery life and a new 5G optical sensor (requested by pro-gaming Razer users allegedly). Much like the Black Widow, the mouse has onboard memory, and programmable buttons. The same mod system is in place allowing a mod button to give each other button multiple functions.
Battery life is claimed to reach over 50 hours, and a micro USB cable takes care of charging while allowing the mouse to function as a standard wired mouse. It will retail at $99, putting it squarely in the middle of the field in terms of premium wireless mice.
Razer were very keen to impress upon us the differences these new peripherals have, and from what we have seen these are well thought out changes designed to give more functionality at a similar or lower price point.
Dell showcased the recently released G3 line of gaming laptops, which function as a cheaper alternative to the G5 and G7 range. Starting at $799 with an Intel i5-8300H and topping out at $999 for an i7 they claim solid performance on a budget. While clearly less powerful than their Alienware counterparts, the G3 played well. The main difference outside of processing power and minor aesthetics is the display. The G5 is available with an ultra high definition (UHD) display much like it’s predecessor (The Inspiron 15 7000). The G3 IPS comes with a perfectly capable IPS, but no option for upgrade.
Also showcased was the new S2719DGF 27” Gaming Monitor. With resolutions up to 1440p, and a reported refresh rate of over 150Hz it is designed with high end gaming in mind. The monitor in action looks fantastic, but even more impressive is the price. According to a Dell representative, the 27” edition will retail at around 420 Euros (around $487) with 24” model available for around 250 Euros (around $290). If these prices are true, this is a lot of gaming monitor for your money.
Alienware were showcasing their revamp of the Elite Gaming Mouse. Designed to adapt to any user, it is incredibly customizable. The sizes connect magnetically to the mouse allowing users to change mouse widths on the fly. Another advantage to this feature is that the thin mouse has two thumb buttons while the wider mouse has 4 (not pictured here). The chassis is capable of taking two sets of weights for optimum control over the feel and balance of the mouse, and the top of the shell is retractable for different hand lengths.
Alienware also were showcasing the new AW988 headset , described as the “gaming headset for the most dedicated audiophile.” While the display model was not able for testing, it was surprisingly light and above all – comfortable.
Of course, this is Alienware, so everything had RGB LEDs, which are fully customizable from the Alienware Command Centre software. The recent range of Alienware laptops boast the high end gaming specs we have become accustomed to, and strike a nice balance aesthetically between the larger than life previous models and standard laptop cases.
Samsung launched the CJ79 34” curved widescreen monitor. While not touted specifically as a gaming monitor, it is the first of it’s kind to support a Thunderbolt 3 connector. Users of Razer external graphics cars will be ale to chain their gaming laptops to the monitor. laptops The 3440 x 1440 screen is capable of supporting dual display sources, and a larger CJ89 monitor has also been announced. Currently neither monitor has a retail price.
A smaller booth at IFA this year was home to AverMedia, showing their latest line in capture cards.
With streaming more popular than ever, AverMedia’s latest capture cards are aimed both at dual PC streaming and PS4 Pro players. The GC573 is an internal capture card capable of 4Kp60 High Dynamic Range (HDR) recording – something they claim is unique. Meanwhile their GC553 Live Gamer ULTRA external capture card provides pass-through 4Kp60 HDR, and recording at 4Kp30. Both cards claim ultra low latency – under 60ms was the figure claimed by a representative.
If these cards can do what they say they are a new standard in capture cards, and we hope to review them in future.
Gaming was somewhat underrepresented at IFA, but given it’s proximity to Gamescom this wasn’t too much of a surprise. What was on show was still impressive, and whether you need a gaming throne or a cheap but high quality monitor you’re well set with what IFA 2018 had to offer.
Read the full article: Gaming at IFA 2018: What’s New and What’s Hot?
