TikTok takes down some hashtags related to election misinformation, leaves others

As social media platforms struggle to get U.S. election misinformation under control with varying degrees of success, TikTok has taken new actions to stop people from searching and browsing select hashtags associated with misinformation and conspiracies related to the U.S. election results.

The video app has redirected some hashtags — including #RiggedElection, #SharpieGate and others — where users have been publishing election misinformation. And it has taken down various videos making claims of “election fraud.”

TikTok takes down election misinformation aimed at younger users

However, based on our scans of the app and other election-related hashtags today, it’s clear that it’s still an uphill battle for TikTok in terms of getting a handle on violating content.

Because of TikTok’s size and scale, even smaller videos from unknown publishers can rack up thousands of views before they disappear.

Media Matters, for example, reported yesterday it was able to identify 11 examples of election misinformation spreading across TikTok, with more than 200,000 combined views. The videos shared conspiracies that ranged from unfounded “magic ballot” narratives to the completely untrue allegations that Arizona poll workers handed out markers to Trump voters so their votes wouldn’t count.

Image Credits: TikTok screenshot via Media Matters

TikTok says all the videos Media Matters reported have since been removed except one where a user made a premature declaration of victory. That one was shadowbanned — meaning its discoverability on the platform was reduced. It also has a banner pointing to authoritative information about the election results.

These individual takedowns are a drop in the bucket compared to the number of videos that are still out there making claims of election fraud. And, so far, TikTok has only removed a small number of hashtags on this subject.

Image Credits: TikTok screenshot via TechCrunch

TikTok confirmed it has removed content and redirected searches for the hashtag #RiggedElection as of yesterday. Now, when you try to find videos flagged with this term in the app, you’ll get to a blank page with a notification that says the search term “may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.” The page also provides a link to TikTok’s Community Guidelines.

“Promoting a safe and positive experience is TikTok’s top priority,” the message reads.

This is the same playbook that TikTok recently used to address the spread of QAnon-related content on its platform. By redirecting searches and hashtags, it makes misinformation harder to find.

TikTok’s QAnon ban has been ‘buggy’

While TikTok declined to share an exhaustive list of hashtags it has taken action on during the elections, we found a few hashtags that returned either no results — like #RiggedElection and #SharpieGate — as well as those that returned only a small handful videos, or what TikTok considers “counter speech.”

The TikTok community will often create videos with counter speech or other content related to a misinformation-related hashtag. In these videos, they’ll provide factual information or will dispute the claims being made in another video. TikTok says this sort of counter speech doesn’t violate its policies. That’s why you may see videos listed under hashtags that would otherwise be associated with misinformation, as opposed to seeing the hashtag entirely silenced.

We also found some lesser-used hashtags like #RepealtheSteal and #VeritasArmy, which have been seen on Twitter, were not showing on TikTok at all. (However, upon reaching out to TikTok, the company chose to redirect these hashtags, too.)

A popular misinfo hashtag, #StoptheSteal, was also not available, but its variation, #StoptheStealing, had seven videos.

Many other hashtags were being used, too, as of the time of writing, including #VoterFraud (and its misspelling #VoterFruad), #DemsCheat, #CorruptElection, #ElectionCorruption, #StoptheStealing, #ElectionFraud (and misspelling #ElectionFruad), #CrookedJoeBiden, #CrookedDems, #Fraud (and its misspelling #Fruad), #Rigged, #Rigged2020, #MailinBallots, #CoupdEtat, #ElectionMeddling, #DemocratsAreDestroyingAmerica and #BallotHarvesting, to name a few.

While some hashtags had little content, many were filled with videos that weren’t just expressing their political views — they were making claims of election fraud. Combined, these hashtags have tens of millions of views, or even more.

Image Credits: TikTok screenshot, video republished previously removed content; screenshot via TechCrunch

For example, when we searched for the hashtag #VoterFraud (20.9 million views), we first encountered videos posted in the months leading up to Election Day that were responding to the Republican-driven claims of voter fraud associated with mail-in ballots.

But many videos under this hashtag have been published by Trump supporters this week, and are videos where the supporters are directly disputing the election results.

Close US election results plunge social media into nightmare misinformation scenario

Among the videos we found were those reposting videos TikTok had already taken down. These included videos featuring Trump supporters’ protests against or for the counting of ballots in various states, calling them proof of election fraud.

In other videos, users opine about how Trump’s lawsuits will prove fraud took place and win him re-election. They sometimes use screenshots of website vote tallies as their “proof.”

Image Credits: TikTok app screenshot via TechCrunch

We also saw videos using text labels overtop their video footage. The text was used to make their claims of election fraud, while the video itself may have them talking in more measured terms about their disappointment with the election results. (It’s unclear if this is a viable workaround to avoiding rule enforcement, however.)

TikTok says its list of blocked hashtags continually grows as new terms and phrases emerge and it’s able to determine how the terms are being used on its platform. It also said it block more election misinformation hashtags in the hours, days and weeks to come.

To be clear, TikTok’s decision to keep this sort of content online doesn’t make it much different from other social networks.

During election season, Facebook and Twitter have taken to labeling election misinformation from high-profile accounts (like Trump’s). Facebook even ran in-app notifications to inform users that votes are still being counted. But both platforms today still easily allow users to click through on a wide range of hashtags that promote this idea of election fraud or rigged results.

Facebook and Instagram notifications warn US users there’s no winner yet in presidential election

TikTok may not much be doing much better, overall, in addressing the sizable amount of content promoting election misinformation on its video network. But TikTok’s ban of top election misinformation hashtags works differently from hashtag bans on other social networks.

Once TikTok has made the decision to ban a term like “SharpieGate,” for example, the content won’t be surfaced whether you use the hashtag symbol (#) itself or not. Facebook, on the other hand, may ban the hashtag specifically, but not the term entirely. That means you can still find content about SharpieGate on its platform — even if it’s largely posts and videos from news organizations.

Facebook blocks hashtags for #sharpiegate, #stopthesteal election conspiracies

#SharpieGate was also among the hashtags Facebook began blocking today related to election misinformation. It also blocked #StoptheSteal and a related group.

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Facebook blocks hashtags for #sharpiegate, #stopthesteal election conspiracies

Facebook today began to block select hashtags which were being used to share misinformation related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Now, searches for the hashtags #SharpieGate is being blocked on the social network. Another election conspiracy hashtag #stopthesteal is also blocked on Facebook, with a note saying some of its content goes against the platform’s community standards. The #stopthesteal hashtag has been promoted by Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign associates on Twitter.

Instead of taking users to search results for the hashtag in question, Facebook presents a page where it explains that posts with the hashtag are being “temporarily hidden.” This message also explains that “some content in those posts goes against our Community Standards,” and offers to direct users to its guidelines under a “Learn More” link.

Image Credits: Facebook screenshot via TechCrunch

Though TechCrunch found select election misinformation hashtags had been banned, there were still many others that would direct users to content that pushed conspiracies disputing the election results or outright calling them fraudulent.

For example, hashtags like #RiggedElection, #Rigged, #ElectionFraud, #ElectionMeddling and others still worked, and even directed users to content associated with QAnon conspiracies, at times — despite Facebook’s earlier ban on QAnon content, which extended to many associated hashtags.

Given that Facebook allowed QAnon content to spread for years, it’s notable that the company moved to block election misinformation hashtags in a matter of days. That indicates Facebook is capable of addressing viral misinformation somewhat quickly — it just has historically chosen not to do so.

As for the hashtags themselves, Sharpiegate had already been thoroughly debunked, both by news outlets and election officials. In a letter posted to Twitter, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors debunked the claims that the use of sharpies would invalidate ballots. Because the ballots are printed with offset columns, the use of sharpies is allowed and would not cause bleed-through or other issues.

Transparency and security is of the utmost importance to us. We provided Sharpies to be used for in person voters at all @maricopacounty Vote Centers. After multiple tests, we found Sharpie to have the fastest-drying ink and best suited for our Vote Center tabulators. https://t.co/B8vmwSTK3f

— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 5, 2020

The claim was first made Tuesday in a video posted to Facebook in which a woman claims poll workers were encouraging some voters to use sharpies in order to invalidate their ballots. That video is now flagged on Facebook with a “false information” label and requires users to click through to watch it.

In addition to its hashtag bans, Facebook today also removed a group, “Stop the Steal,” that had been organized to delegitimize the election process, the company told BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac.

Facebook statement: “In line with the exceptional measures that we are taking during this period of heightened tension, we have removed the Group 'Stop the Steal,' which was creating real-world events…

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) November 5, 2020

President Trump is leaning heavily into a false narrative that suspicious polling place behavior and late-arriving ballots are part of a Democratic plot to thwart his reelection chances. In a speech from the White House early Wednesday morning, Trump declared premature victory, raising baseless concerns that mail-in ballots, which were expected to lean heavily Democratic, were somehow improper as they erased some of his early gains. “We were getting ready to win this election,” Trump said. “Frankly, we did win this election.”

On Twitter, many of Trump’s recent tweets promoting unfounded election conspiracies have been hidden from view and placed behind a misinformation warning. Those hidden tweets also have likes, retweets and comments restricted in order to limit their ability to spread in a viral way. On Facebook, the president’s posts alleging fraud at voting sites are not called out directly as misinformation. Instead, Facebook pairs them with informational labels reminding users that vote-by-mail ballots are trustworthy or noting that election officials follow “strict rules” around processing and counting ballots.

Facebook so far has not responded to a request for comment about its new hashtag bans, but they’re observable within the Facebook app on both the desktop and mobile app as of the time of writing.

Close US election results plunge social media into nightmare misinformation scenario

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Rocket Lab will try to recover the booster of its Electron rocket for the first time on its next launch

Rocket Lab is set to complete a crucial test for its rocket reusability program during its next mission, which is currently set to take place sometime in mid-November, with a launch widow that opens on November 16. This is a bit of a surprise, because the launch company said that it would be doing this on its 17th flight, and the next launch is actually its 16th, but the company had a succinct answer for why it moved up the timetable.

I know we said flight 17 for recovery but… pic.twitter.com/N3HDdCwPFD

— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) November 5, 2020

This isn’t the first test Rocket Lab has performed in pursuit of reusability — after announcing in August 2019 its intent to recover and refly the Electron booster, something Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck originally said wasn’t in the cards for the company, Rocket Lab has tested reentry guidance and control systems, as well as the parachute to be used to slow the booster’s descent once it’s back in Earth’s atmosphere.

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket will go reusable, with the company aiming for mid-air helicopter recovery

In a video released today, Beck explained the reasoning behind even attempting to recover the boosters (essentially to increase the company’s rate of production by eliminating the need to build a new booster for every flight) and also the reasons why it wasn’t in the original plan (the Electron is too small to allow for an engine-powered boost back like the ones Falcon 9 and Blue Origin’s New Shepard uses).

But Beck and team realized they could use an unconventional approach that involves flipping the rocket around and angling it such that it survives reentry, paired with a drogue parachute deployment and primary parachute combo that slows it enough that a helicopter can catch it midair as it drifts. This recovery attempt won’t include that midflight snag, but will instead hopefully see the booster land itself gently enough on the ocean’s surface, slowed by the chute, allowing a recovery team to pick it up.

Beck says that the helicopter catch part is actually not his biggest concern, since the company has previously demonstrated that part of its approach works in practice. Instead, it’s ensuring that they’re just able to actually get the stage after it deploys its orbital cargo to begin with.

If Rocket Lab can recover this first stage, that will put it well-within striking distance of putting an operational recovery system in place, hopefully leading to less time between launches and potentially lower operational costs down the line.

No matter how the launch works out, we’ll get the chance to go over the attempt and next steps with Beck at our inaugural TC Sessions: Space event in December, where he’s joining us on our virtual stage for a fireside chat.

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Inside fintech startup Upstart’s IPO filing

While the world awaits the Airbnb IPO filing that could come as early as next week, Upstart dropped its own S-1 filing. The fintech startup facilitates loans between consumers and partner banks, an operation that attracted around $144 million in capital prior to its IPO.

First Round Capital, Khosla Ventures, Third Point Ventures, Rakuten and The Progressive Corporation led rounds in the startup, according to Crunchbase data.

There’s quite a lot to like in Upstart’s IPO filing, including rapidly advancing revenues and recent profitable period. However, the company’s revenue concentration could be a concern to some investors who recall what recently happened to Fastly shares after losing a large customer.

PitchBook data indicates that the company was last valued at $750 million thanks to its 2019 Series D worth $50 million. Can Upstart reach unicorn status with its IPO? Let’s peek at the numbers and try to answer the question.

Results, earnings

Upstart’s technology uses what it describes as artificial intelligence (AI) to approve consumer loans. It collects consumer demand for credit and connects that demand to bank partners who fund the loans. The company’s AI-powered credit tool can give consumers “higher approval rates [and] lower interest rates,” according to its S-1 filing, which offers banks “access to new customers, lower fraud and loss rates, and increased automation.”

If Upstart’s AI tool can, in fact, more intelligently determine consumer creditworthiness, everyone could come out a winner, with consumers paying less and banks adding to their loan books without taking on outsized risk.

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Implementing a data-driven approach to guarantee fair, equitable and transparent employee pay

Angela Loeffler Contributor

Angela Loeffler is Head of People at Plastiq and is a recent recipient of the Financial Technology Report’s 2020 Top 25 Women Leaders in Financial Technology.

Your pay is important. It’s usually something most people don’t understand — why are we paid what we’re paid? Ultimately, this lack of clarity can lead to confusion and negative feelings that affect our productivity and relationships with our employers. You may have encountered situations when you felt your pay was unfairly biased by your manager, recruiter, HR or company policies.

You may know or suspect instances in which your pay has been determined based on someone else’s preferences for background, or stereotypes about your gender, race, ethnicity, identity or abilities. It can even feel unfair based on your own confidence in your ability to negotiate.

What do we think is the right thing to do, and how do we aim to achieve it here at Plastiq? Paying employees fairly, equitably and competitively is what’s right. Being transparent about our philosophy and practices is the commitment we’ve made to achieve this goal.

In designing our compensation philosophy, the Plastiq leadership team agreed that fair pay and transparency would be our guiding principles. Then it was all about the data.

The first step was to understand everyone’s work: their job function, the scale and scope of their work, and their day-to-day responsibilities. This led us to being able to identify if someone was working in accounting or financial forecasting, software development or product management, recruiting or people operations, contributing as a recent graduate/new person to the workforce, a seasoned individual contributor, a senior team lead, an experienced people manager or a more strategic cross-functional vice president.

Next we invested in access to market data from a credible resource — one that we know is used by other companies we respect — with comparable market, industry and size to Plastiq. Because companies have to participate in the benchmark survey to be able to purchase and access the survey data, we knew we were getting accurate, verified information we could trust. This ensures a few things: no subjective self-reported data, accurate alignment in assessing the scale and scope of all the roles, as well as mutual interest by the user base to make sure the data reporting and retrieval was reliable. For Plastiq, the most relevant data centered around what other companies in San Francisco and Boston pay their talent. We also cared about paying as well or better than other tech companies — in particular fintech companies — that were not yet publicly traded.

These distinctions are important for any business when planning pay. To use another small business as an example — let’s say a food truck looking to hire cashiers and cooks — one might evaluate how much to pay its employees using several factors. For example, there may be a difference in pay for food trucks operating out of Austin versus Seattle; the type of food truck (savory or sweet) may influence the level of skill required to prepare or serve the food; margins may be vastly different, meaning the business may be able to employ many or only a few. If you were planning to staff and pay a large-scale, lower-margin cupcake food truck in Austin, would it make sense for you to base your employees’ pay on a two-person sushi truck operation that required skilled sushi chefs in Seattle? Probably not. You’d want to benchmark against a business — preferably multiple businesses — like yours, in your market, with similar staffing and operational needs, to feel confident you’re using the right data.

There is always a way to understand the market data for a company’s particular situation and what their competitors pay for talent. On the flip side, if you’re trying to figure out what you should be paid and what’s fair, there is market data available to help guide you. You could start by asking other people you know that do the same type of work as you what pay they’ve seen around. You could even (and should), ask your manager, recruiter or HR team for the data.

For us at Plastiq, knowing we were committed to fair pay and to formalizing that into a transparent philosophy, the next piece was to decide how competitively we wanted to pay versus the market rates. We considered three possibilities:

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The volcano method for understanding the fintech revolution

The Department of Justice moved to block the long-impending Visa-Plaid deal today.

The transaction was announced in early 2020, making the decision by the government to try and scuttle its consummation in November a large irritation to both parties. The pair spent nearly the entire year operating in the gray area between having struck a deal and being granted its approval, and may now have endured all that misery for no reason.

But regardless of what happens next with the deal, inside the government’s suit itself was a simply epic piece of art. That’s something you don’t say much about antitrust, sure, but in 2020 everything is possible.

Here’s the drawing, with context:

As you can read from the accompanying text, Plaid is the volcano and, we suppose by analogy, Visa is somewhere else above the water doing business, worried that Plaid may erupt and change the climate in which Visa currently operates. That would work.

A less interesting explanation of the Magic Volcano — a far better conceptual framework than a magic quadrant — is what former Visa Ventures founder Peter Berg said about the doodle:

By Peter’s analogy, the volcano is really more of an iceberg. That would make Visa the Titanic or some similar boat, right?

It would be fun to close by saying “all aboard the S.S. Visatanic,” but it appears the government is trying to ensure that Plaid cannot berth aboard the boat.

Sticking to our nautical riff, if the Volcano-Iceberg Deal is killed, will Plaid raise the Jolly Roger and go hunt some other ships? There’s one in particular that comes to mind.

 

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Ayar raises $35M for optical interconnect tech to overcome computing bottlenecks in the CPU

The race is on to build more efficient chip technology for faster and less power-intensive computing, and today an innovative startup that’s built one solution based on in-package optical interconnect (optical I/O) technology is announcing a round of growth funding from a number of strategic investors that speaks to how its approach is getting traction.

Ayar Labs, which makes chip solutions based on optical networking principals — architecture that promises both faster computing speeds and far less power consumption (and heat) in the process — has picked up $35 million in a Series B round of funding. Co-led by Downing Ventures and BlueSky Capital, the round also includes Applied Ventures (the VC arm of Applied Materials), Castor Ventures and SGInnovate (the Singaporean government’s deep tech fund), with participation also from existing investors BlueSky Capital, Founders Fund, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Intel Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, and Playground Global.

Charles Wuischpard, CEO of Ayar Labs style="letter-spacing: -0.1px; font-size: 1.125rem;"> said that the funding will be used to continue developing its product as well as working on further commercialization. “The main application area for our technology is next-generation computing, anywhere that there is massive movement of data,” he said.

That includes aerospace and government applications, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, telecoms and cloud applications, and LIDAR for self-driving car and other autonomous systems. Currently Wuischpard said that most of Ayar’s work is in the areas of AI and HPC — it’s a key partner of Intel’s in its work on AI computers for Darpa (see here and here) — and in telecoms/cloud.

Ayar’s focus on optical technology — specifically using silicon photonics and processing to build an optical communication device that can be built into a CPU — is emerging as a key area for chipmakers. Just last week, Marvell announced that it would buy Inphi, an optical networking specialist, for $10 billion.

As Wuischpard describes it, the big breakthrough that Ayar has brought to bear has been bringing down the size and scale of the technology to work within a computer’s core chip architecture, its CPU, which impacts and controls memory, control unit, and processing/logic, helping to speed up computing for the most demanding applications.

(The company was co-founded by Mark Wade, Chen Sun, Vladimir Stojanovic, and Alexandra Wright-Gladstein based on work at MIT, and they brought in Wuischpard, an engineer by training and also a veteran exec from Intel, to help figure out how to build a commercialised business around that.)

“Optics has been around for a long time,” he points out, first in subsea cabling, then between data centers and then inside the data center. “We think of ourselves as the last or first mile, bringing optical tech into the CPU.”

As he describes it, the company has devised a new type of modulator to turn electrons into photons, a “microing modulator” as he calls it. “There have been 1,000 research papers on this, but it’s typically difficult to manufacture and operate over a wide range of temperatures, and this is where a lot of our patents come in, to develop that into a single chiplet” he said. The amount of bandwidth the tech can handle, 2 terabits/second, “would fill a whole server, but we are doing it in 5×9 millimeters.”

He adds that the opportunities here are such that there are others also working on the same kind of technology. “There are bigger companies and one or two smaller ones, but they are all still a couple of years behind us in commercialization,” he said. “It’s one thing to build one, versus a million.” Having GLOBALFOUNDRIES as an investor — it’s also fabricating hardware for Ayar — is key in this regard.

The company seems like it would be a key acquisition target, I pointed out, not least because of the race for having ownership of technology that can give a company a leading edge over another, but also because of the trend of consolidation in the chip industry. (Intel’s acquisition of Habana Labs also underscores the interest it has in optical tech.)

Wuischpard laughs a little ironically and says that Covid-19 has been a “help” in this regard: acquisitions have slowed down, giving the startup more time and less pressure to sell up.

“Ayar Labs represents the future of interconnects which have eventual applicability to every electronic device on earth”, said Warren Rogers, Partner and Head of Ventures at Downing Ventures, in a statement. “We have the highest confidence that when their optical I/O technology is applied to computing, the industry will finally break away from Moore’s Law and redefine the boundaries of computing.”

“We’ve been an investor in Ayar Labs since the beginning and have been looking for opportunities to increase our ownership in the company” added Madison Hamman, Managing Director of Blue Sky Capital. “We are very excited about Ayar Labs and believe in their patented technology and execution of a plan that makes it a core building block of future computing systems.”

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Mobile testing platform Kobiton raises $14M, acquires competitor Mobile Labs

Atlanta-based Kobiton, a mobile testing platform that allows developers and QA teams to test their apps on real devices, both on their own desks and through the company’s cloud-based service, today announced that it has acquired Mobile Labs, another Atlanta-based mobile testing service.

To finance the acquisition of its well-funded competitor, Kobiton raised a $14 million extension to its $5.2 million Series A from its existing investor BIP Capital and new investor Fulcrum Equity Partners.

As Kobiton CEO Kevin Lee told me, we shouldn’t take that as the acquisition price, but it’s probably a fair guess that the real price isn’t too far off. The companies declined to disclose the exact price, though. Mobile Labs, which was founded in 2011, had raised about $15 million before the acquisition, according to Crunchbase. The last time it raised outside funding was in 2014. Kobiton and Mobile Labs do not share any common investors.

Kobiton CEO Kevin Lee. Image: Kobiton 

It’s interesting that Kobiton, which launched in 2017 and which may seem like a smaller player at first glance, was able to acquire Mobile Labs. Lee argues that one of the reasons Mobile Labs decided to sell is that while his company has long focused on using machine learning to help developers build the tests for their apps — and the open-source Appium testing framework — Mobile Labs had fallen behind in this area.

“They were a little slow to invest in [AI] and I think they realized — and the rest of the market, I think will realize it — if you don’t invest heavily and early, you kind of get behind the eight ball,” Lee told me.

He also noted that there are a lot of obvious synergies between the two companies. Mobile Labs has a lot of clients in the gaming and financial services space, for example. A lot of those clients are relatively new to mobile, while Kobiton’s existing customer base is often mobile-first.

“They’ve been around for 10 years and [have] a lot of partners, a lot of stuff outside the U.S.,” Lee noted. “They have mainly focused on what I would call large established enterprises in regulated industries or industries that are really concerned about IP protection — so behind the firewalls — where they really succeeded well.”

Those Mobile Labs customers, Lee said, were also looking for AI/ML-based testing solutions and the acquisition will now allow the two companies to layer Kobiton’s technology on top of the Mobile Labs solution. There will be an upgrade path for these customers and they’ll be able to do so at their own pace. There’s no plan to sunset Mobile Labs’ existing services for the time being, though some of Mobile Labs’ individual brands may change names.

With this acquisition, Kobiton will more than double the number of its U.S.-based employees, though that’s in part because a good portion of the company’s team is based in Vietnam.

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Apple releases iOS 14.2 with new emojis and accessibility feature that locates people with LiDAR

{rss:content:encoded} Apple releases iOS 14.2 with new emojis and accessibility feature that locates people with LiDAR https://ift.tt/3esn3Q1 https://ift.tt/2TVs6yG November 05, 2020 at 07:48PM

Apple has released iOS 14.2 today. It includes multiple new features as well as some important bug fixes and security updates. Among other things, this release introduces over 100 new emojis.

You’ll find a transgender flag, a smiling face with tear, pinched fingers, two people hugging, some insects and animals, a disguised face and more. When it comes to new variations, there will be a Mx Claus, a gender-inclusive alternative to Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus. Tuxedos are no longer limited to men and veils are no longer limited to women — you’ll be able to send an emoji with a woman wearing a tuxedo and a man wearing a veil.

Apple to release new emojis with iOS 14.2

Today’s release also includes a new accessibility feature for blind users who have an iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max. Thanks to the built-in LiDAR sensor, you can use your iPhone to detect the presence of and distance to people in the view of the iPhone’s camera.

While it is still useful beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, you can use it to receive an alert when there’s someone in front of you that is more than six feet away, and another one if they come closer to you. In addition to stereo audio alerts, you can set up a haptic pulse that goes faster as the person gets closer.

TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey has more details on the new feature:

iPhones can now tell blind users where and how far away people are

iOS 14.2 also adds some minor features, such as new wallpapers, headphone audio level notifications when the volume is too high and redesigned controls for AirPlay.

When Apple introduced the HomePod Mini, the company talked about a new Intercom feature that lets you interact with another Apple user in your house. Today’s software updates add Intercom support for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods and CarPlay.

If you have AirPods, you can now enable optimized battery charging. It works like optimized battery charging on your iPhone. If you plug your AirPods before going to bed, they won’t charge at full speed. Instead, your iPhone can tell your AirPods to charge to 100% right before you wake up — it should improve your battery life.

Apple is also releasing iPadOS 14.2 and watchOS 7.1. Apple Watch users in South Korea and Russia can now try out the ECG feature with recent Apple Watch models.

Before updating, back up your device. Make sure your iCloud backup is up to date by opening the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tapping on your account information at the top. Alternatively, you can plug your iOS device into your computer to do a manual backup in iTunes or the Finder. Once this is done, you should go to the Settings app, then ‘General’ and then ‘Software Update.’

Here’s the full iOS 14.2 changelog:

iOS 14.2 includes the following improvements for your iPhone:

• Over 100 new emoji, including animals, food, faces, household objects, musical instruments, gender-inclusive emoji, and more
• Eight new wallpapers in both light and dark mode versions
• Magnifier can detect people nearby, and report their distance using the LiDAR sensor included in iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max
• Support for iPhone 12 Leather Sleeve with MagSafe
• Optimized battery charging for AirPods to slow the rate of battery aging by reducing the time your AirPods spends fully charged
• Headphone audio level notifications to alert you when audio level could impact your hearing
• New AirPlay controls to stream entertainment throughout your home
• Intercom support with HomePod and HomePod mini using iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and CarPlay
• Ability to connect HomePod to Apple TV 4K for stereo, surround sound, and Dolby Atmos audio
• Option to provide statistics about Exposure Notifications, without identifying you, to participating Public Health Authorities

This release also fixes the following issues:

• Apps could be out of order on the Home Screen dock
• Camera viewfinder may appear black when launched
• The keyboard on the Lock Screen could miss touches when trying to enter the passcode
• Reminders could default to times in the past
• Photos widget may not display content
• Weather widget could display the high temperature in Celsius when set to Fahrenheit
• Next-hour precipitation chart description in Weather could incorrectly indicate when precipitation stops
• Voice Memos recordings are interrupted by incoming calls
• The screen could be black during Netflix video playback
• Apple Cash could fail to send or receive money when asked via Siri
• Apple Watch app may unexpectedly close when opened
• Workout GPS routes or Health data are prevented from syncing between Apple Watch and iPhone for some users
• Audio is incorrectly labeled as "Not Playing” in the CarPlay Dashboard
• Devices could be prevented from charging wirelessly
• Exposure Notifications is disabled when restoring iPhone from iCloud Backup or transferring data to a new iPhone using iPhone Migration

For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://ift.tt/1UO9Pxs

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NASA wants new and innovative storytelling tech to document its Artemis Moon missions

NASA has issued a new request for proposals from partners that would be able to help it supplement its own storytelling in new and innovative ways, including potentially through use of robotic camera systems, high-resolution and 360-degree video capture, immersive VR content and more. The agency has noted that it’s looking for responses form a vast range of potential partners, including broadcasters and studios, as well as aerospace-specific companies, nonprofits and school.

This could be a prime opportunity for tech startups and younger companies working on robotic camera capture systems, highly portable cameras with unique features, software that automates or enhances media capture or editing, or even broadband video compression to land a significant partner. Artemis, NASA’s series of missions that will include a return trip to the Moon’s surface currently set for 2024, will also be squarely in the public eye over the course of the next decade at least.

Proposals could result in actually sending equipment along for the ride on forthcoming Artemis missions, including the crewed lunar orbital fly-by set for 2023. Based on the language NASA uses in its release, it’s really looking for ideas that could maximize the reach and impact of its groundbreaking effort to return to the Moon, and ultimately set up a more permanent research base – and it seems up for just about anything, as long as it sounds like it’ll go beyond standard TV and broadcast approaches.

The officially Announcement for Proposals from the agency can be found here, and any proposals are due by December 11, 2020 before midnight in order to qualify for consideration.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J NASA wants new and innovative storytelling tech to document its Artemis Moon missions https://ift.tt/3l1DOUz

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Reposite streamlines the most tedious tasks for travel agents

Meet Reposite, a software-as-a-service startup that wants to help travel agents of all kinds deal with their daily tasks. While the travel agency industry is huge, most people who work in this industry still don’t have a good system in place to deal with information, orders and communication.

Reposite wants to be a one-stop shop for tour operators, event planners and more. The platform lets you centralize all information in one repository. It lets you upload client information and your supplier database so that you don’t have to juggle with Excel files and good old binders.

Compared to traditional CRM systems, such as Salesforce, Reposite is specifically tailored for the travel and events industry.

You can invite your suppliers to join Reposite and update their profile. This way, information always remains up-to-date. Travel agents looking for a specific place will have a higher chance of finding a specific supplier if there’s a lot of information on the profile.

For suppliers, maintaining a Reposite profile shouldn’t be too intensive as you only need to update a single profile. All your travel partners will get the most recent profile automatically.

After that, Reposite helps you stay on top of your projects. As a travel agent, chances are you spend most of your time interacting with clients and suppliers. You can save email templates, track your meetings and calls from the platform. There are also some task management features built in, which should help you keep an eye on your pipeline.

When you’re ready to go ahead and sign a contract, you can invoice your clients and pay your suppliers from Reposite. You can see if there are any pending payment.

The startup is still quite young and recently raised a seed round of $2.5 million. Liberty City Ventures is leading the round, with Greycroft, Pritzker and Raine also participating.

While there isn’t a ton of travel activity during the pandemic, the startup thinks its product can help the industry as a whole for a better recovery. It should certainly help some travel agents become more efficient, which could improve the bottom line.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Reposite streamlines the most tedious tasks for travel agents https://ift.tt/34Y0orB

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Extra Crunch Live: Join Greylock’s Asheem Chandna today at 3pm EDT / 12pm PDT on the future of enterprise and cybersecurity investing

Yes, there is an election, but that’s getting pretty boring at this point. What’s far more interesting is the future of enterprise and cybersecurity startups, markets where companies are dumping billions of dollars in the wake of the largest change in office work in decades. Old notions are being discarded, new ideas are in — and all that portends huge potential opportunities for ambitious founders.

That’s why I am so excited to be hosting the next edition of our Extra Crunch Live interview series with the superlative enterprise venture capitalist Asheem Chandna of Greylock. We’re live in about two hours today at 3pm EST / 11am PST / 8pm GMT. Details to join are below the fold, and if you don’t have an Extra Crunch membership, click through to signup in advance.

For nearly two decades, Asheem Chandna has been investing in enterprise and security startups at Greylock, with massive investment wins in Palo Alto Networks, AppDynamics, and Sumo Logic. These days, he continues to invest in cybersecurity with companies like Awake Security and Abnormal Security, data platforms like Rubrik and Delphix, and the stealthy search engine company Neeva. As a leading early-stage investor and mentor in the space, he’s seen a multitude of companies transition from inception to product-market fit to IPO.

We’re going to be talking about the current landscape for enterprise and cybersecurity startups and then also talking about company building in these contexts, an area that Chandna has been particularly focused over his career. Plus, as always with ECL, we’ll be taking questions from you, our always inquisitive audience.

So come prepared for a great conversation, and join us shortly for another ECL live broadcast.

Event Details

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Extra Crunch Live: Join Greylock’s Asheem Chandna today at 3pm EDT / 12pm PDT on the future of enterprise and cybersecurity investing https://ift.tt/38cjhZS

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