Telegram introduces a feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

Telegram, a popular instant messaging app, has introduced a new feature to give group admins on the app better control over how members engage, the latest in a series of interesting features it has rolled out in recent months to expand its appeal. The feature, dubbed Slow Mode, allows a group administrator to dictate how often a member could send a message in the group. If implemented by a group, members who have sent a text will have to wait between 30 seconds to as long as an hour before they can say something again in that group. The messaging...

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Telegram introduces a feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

{rss:content:encoded} Telegram introduces a feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group https://ift.tt/2MSueoJ https://ift.tt/33B6uvo August 10, 2019 at 08:34PM Telegram, a popular instant messaging app, has introduced a new feature to give group admins on the app better control over how members engage, the latest in a series of interesting features it has rolled out in recent months to expand its appeal. The feature, dubbed Slow Mode, allows a group administrator to dictate how often a member could send a message in the group. If...

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Startups Weekly: Angel vs. VC

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about DoorDash’s acquisition of Caviar, which no one saw coming. Before that, I jotted down some notes on SoftBank’s second Vision Fund. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here. What’s...

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Biotech researchers venture into the wild to start their own business

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How a Swedish saxophonist built Kobalt, the world’s next music unicorn

You may not have heard of Kobalt before, but you probably engage with the music it oversees every day, if not almost every hour. Combining a technology platform to better track ownership rights and royalties of songs with a new approach to representing musicians in their careers, Kobalt has risen from the ashes of the 2000 dot-com bubble to become a major player in the streaming music era. It is the leading alternative to incumbent music publishers (who represent songwriters) and is building a new model record label for the growing “middle class’...

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Reports say White House has drafted an order putting the FCC in charge of monitoring social media

The White House is contemplating issuing an executive order that would widen its attack on the operations of social media companies. The White House has prepared an executive order called “Protecting Americans from Online Censorship” that would give the Federal Communications Commission oversight of how Facebook, Twitter and other tech companies monitor and manage their social networks, according to a CNN report. Under the order, which has not yet been announced and could be revised, the FCC would be tasked with developing new regulations that...

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Car2go hikes hourly rental rates by as much as a third

{rss:content:encoded} Car2go hikes hourly rental rates by as much as a third https://ift.tt/2M8Qs6p https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/car2go-rates.png August 09, 2019 at 08:23PM By-the-minute car rental service Car2go is raising its rates for short trips under the guise of variable pricing, the company announced to its users today. As we’ve seen with other variably priced services like delivery and ride hailing, in practice this means you never really know what it will cost but will have little choice but to pay. In an email to...

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Why AI needs more social workers, with Columbia University’s Desmond Patton

Sometimes it does seem the entire tech industry could use someone to talk to, like a good therapist or social worker. That might sound like an insult, but I mean it mostly earnestly: I am a chaplain who has spent 15 years talking with students, faculty, and other leaders at Harvard (and more recently MIT as well), mostly nonreligious and skeptical people like me, about their struggles to figure out what it means to build a meaningful career and a satisfying life, in a world full of insecurity, instability, and divisiveness of every kind. In related...

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Last chance for early-bird tickets to TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019

It’s down to the wire folks. Today’s the last day you can save $100 on your ticket to TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019, which takes place on September 5 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. The deadline expires in mere hours — at 11:59 p.m. (PT). Get the best possible price and buy your early-bird ticket right now. We expect more than 1,000 attendees representing the enterprise software community’s best and brightest. We’re talking founders of companies in every stage and CIOs and systems architects from some of the biggest multinationals....

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India’s Lendingkart raises $30M to help small businesses access working capital

As India continues its race to adopt digital payments at a pace and scale seen rarely worldwide, the country’s startups are quickly building solutions to bring financial services to businesses. And they are attracting significant capital from local investors and global giants to scale their ambitions. Lendingkart, one of the many startups in the country that is helping micro, small and medium-sized enterprises access working capital, has raised $30 million as part of its Series D financing round, it said on Friday. Existing investors Fullerton...

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Preclusio uses machine learning to comply with GDPR, other privacy regulations

As privacy regulations like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act proliferate, more startups are looking to help companies comply. Enter Preclusio, a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2019 class, which has developed a machine learning-fueled solution to help companies adhere to these privacy regulations. “We have a platform that is deployed on prem in our customer’s environment, and helps them identify what data they’re collecting, how they’re using it, where it’s being stored and how it should be protected. We help companies put together...

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Facebook could face billions in potential damages as court rules facial recognition lawsuit can proceed

Facebook is facing exposure to billions of dollars in potential damages as a federal appeals court on Thursday rejected Facebook’s arguments to halt a class action lawsuit claiming it illegally collected and stored the biometric data of millions of users. The class action lawsuit has been working its way through the courts since 2015, when Illinois Facebook users sued the company for alleged violations of the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act by automatically collecting and identifying people in photographs posted to the service. Now, thanks...

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Startups seek sperm… And venture capital backing

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we were helmed by Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm, but those of you who love the show having guests on don’t despair. As we explain at the top, there’s a lot of folks coming on the show soon, many of whom you know by name. But that’s to come, and we had a lot to chat through this week. Including, right from the jump, the latest gyrations in the stock market. Earlier this week tech stocks, and especially cloud...

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Autonomous air mobility company EHang to deploy air shuttle service in Guangzhou

China’s EHang, a company focused on developing and deploying autonomous passenger and freight low-altitude vehicles, will build out its first operational network of air taxis and transports in Guangzhou. The company announced that the Chinese city would play host to its pilot location for a citywide deployment. The pilot will focus on not only showing that a low-altitude, rotor-powered aircraft makes sense for use in cities, but that a whole network of them can operate autonomously in concert, controlled and monitored by a central traffic management...

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HarmonyOS is Huawei’s homegrown operating system for smartphones and smart home devices

{rss:content:encoded} HarmonyOS is Huawei’s homegrown operating system for smartphones and smart home devices https://ift.tt/2YX9YIQ https://ift.tt/2yMCMFB August 09, 2019 at 10:37AM After months of conflicting remarks from Huawei executives, the Chinese networking giant on Friday officially unveiled HarmonyOS, a mobile operating system it has built to power smartphones and smart home devices as the company attempts to cut its reliance on international giants. HarmonyOS will be made available for smart screen products such as TV later this year,...

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Glow raises $2.3M to help podcasters make money

Glow is a new startup that says it wants to help podcasters build media business. That’s something co-founder and CEO Amira Valliani said she tried to do herself. After a career that included working in the Obama White House and getting an MBA from Wharton, she launched a podcast covering local elections in Cambridge, Mass., and she said that after the initial six episodes, she struggled to find a sustainable business model. Valliani (pictured above with her co-founder and chief product officer Brian Elieson) recalled thinking, “Well, I got this...

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This startup is helping food app delivery workers start their own damn delivery companies

Following many months of pressure, DoorDash, one of the most frequently used food delivery apps in the U.S., said late last month that it was finally changing its tipping policy to pass 100% of tips along to workers, rather than employ some of that money toward defraying its own costs. The move was a step in the right direction, but as a New York Times piece recently underscored, there are many remaining challenges for food delivery couriers, including not knowing where a delivery is going until a worker picks it up (Uber Eats), having just seconds...

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Voxel51 raises $2 million for its video-native identification of people, cars and more

Many companies and municipalities are saddled with hundreds or thousands of hours of video and limited ways to turn it into usable data. Voxel51 offers a machine learning-based option that chews through video and labels it, not just with simple image recognition but with an understanding of motions and objects over time. Annotating video is an important task for a lot of industries, the most well known of which is certainly autonomous driving. But it’s also important in robotics, the service and retail industries, for police encounters (now that...

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