Author : zebethcontrol

Kick off Disrupt with a live recording of your favorite ZebethMedia podcasts • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Chain Reaction podcast, Disrupt, Disrupt 2022, Equity podcast, found-podcast, StartupsNo Comments

ZebethMedia Disrupt 2022 starts next week, which means we’re busy putting the final touches on what is shaping up to be a massive and pretty damn fun event. And this year, we’re doing something entirely new: live podcasts. Each day of Disrupt will kick off on the ZebethMedia+ stage with a live recording of a ZebethMedia podcast. Equity, Found and Chain Reaction will record their week’s episodes onstage in front of a live audience. That’s you! Each day of the event, a different show will welcome everyone back to the venue with news, analysis and jokes. There will even be breakfast, so make sure to come early — do not party too much! — for some eats and some chats. ZebethMedia’s podcasting efforts have grown from a small side project into a material plank in our larger output, so come hang out with us and have some fun. Here’s the agenda, which kicks off at 9:00 a.m. PDT: Tuesday: Equity Live with Mary Ann Azevedo, Natasha Mascarenhas and Alex Wilhelm Wednesday: Chain Reaction Live with Anita Ramaswamy, Jacquelyn Melinek and Lucas Matney Thursday: Found Live with Jordan Crook and Darrell Etherington And then buckle in for the rest of Disrupt to catch Serena Williams, Chris Dixon, Kevin Hart, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe and OnlyFans CEO Ami Gan on the Disrupt stage and Brex CEO Henrique Dubugras, Kleiner Perkins partner Annie Case and Bessemer Venture partner Tess Hatch on the ZebethMedia+ stage. And of course you can catch Startup Battlefield 200, our startup pitch-off that comes with a $100,000 equity-free check. The full schedule’s here, and if you still need a ticket, head here. We’re also providing free access to the Expo area for anyone who has been laid off recently, in case you are looking for a new gig and have a startup role high on your list.

Sarah Guo isn’t late to the AI party • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in conviction, Equity podcast, greylock, Sarah Guo, StartupsNo Comments

Sarah Guo isn’t late to the AI party, but she did just raise a $101 million fund to bet on the appetizers. Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work, and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex interviewed Guo, who worked at Greylock for nearly a decade, and her launch of Conviction. We spoke about the self-correcting venture market, what made her leave Greylock, and even rewound to her last episode with us (recorded almost exactly three years ago). There was also an especially fruitful conversation about the opportunity in artificial intelligence right now, and how she’s defining Software 3.0. (Warning: We talk about SaaS!) We also dug into why she started a fund, the LP market, and more. The conversation ran a bit long, but it felt reasonable to keep going given the sheer breadth of stuff that we wanted to get through. Don’t forget that Equity is going to be live at Disrupt next week, on Tuesday morning. It’s going to be a blast. And before we go, two programming notes (that help your wallet, too): Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. ZebethMedia also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!

Toyota exposed 300,000 customer email addresses for 5 years • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in cybersecurity, data leaks, GitHub, Security, ToyotaNo Comments

Automotive giant and car maker Toyota has warned that the personal information of roughly 300,000 customers may have been exposed for close to five years. The possible exposure relates to T-Connect, an official Toyota app that allows customers to connect their smartphone to their vehicle’s dashboard infotainment system. In a statement, Toyota admitted that a subcontractor developing the T-Connect website inadvertently uploaded part of the site’s source code to a public GitHub repository in December 2017, where it sat undiscovered until last month. This source code contained an access key to a server that stored customer email addresses and customer management numbers that it assigns to each customer. Toyota said that a total of 296,019 email addresses could have been accessed by anyone who found the access key until the access to the GitHub repository was closed on September 15, 2022. Toyota, which confirmed it has since changed the server’s access key on September 17, said that no other information, such as customer names, phone numbers and credit card information, was affected. But the company was forced to admit that it could not rule out the possibility of someone having accessed and stolen the data during the five-year span. “As a result of an investigation by security experts, although we cannot confirm access by a third party based on the access history of the data server where the customer’s email address and customer management number are stored, at the same time, we cannot completely deny it,” Toyota said in a statement. Toyota advised customers whose details may have been leaked to be on alert for phishing attempts and to avoid opening email attachments from unknown senders that claim to be from Toyota. A similar security lapse recently led to the leak of a huge amount of sensitive data from Shanghai’s police database, including the names, addresses, phone numbers, national identifications, birthplaces, and criminal records of more than 70 percent of the country’s population — approximately 1 billion Chinese residents.

Microsoft refreshes the Surface Laptop, Pro and Studio • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Gadgets, Hardware, Microsoft, microsoft surface, Surface, surface laptop, surface pro, surface studioNo Comments

Microsoft introduced a deluge of upgraded Surface products during a virtual keynote this morning. Detailed in a blog post penned by Chief Product Officer, Panos Panay, the Laptop 5 gets top billing here. The devoted touchscreen notebook arrives in 13.5- and 15-inch models, powered by Intel Evo, which the company claims will make it “50% more powerful than their predecessor.” Image Credits: Microsoft The 13-inch model arrives with a 12th Gen Core i5, upgradable to i7, while the larger version is available with the latter. This time out, AMD won’t be available for the system. Both models do, however, not have Thunderbolt 4 support built in. The 13- and 15-inch models start at $1,000 and $1,300, respectively. Not a huge update this time out, unfortunately. The company devotes more words to the Surface Pro 9, which is available in both Intel and Arm flavors. The convertible, which celebrates a decade of life this year, has a 13-inch touchscreen, with support for Vision IQ (Intel only, apparently), Dolby’s feature that adjust display settings based on ambient light. That system also starts at $1,000 for the Intel model and $1,300 for the Arm. The Laptop and Pro arrive October 25. Lastly, but certainly not leastly is the Surface Studio 2+. As the name suggests, it’s less of a full upgrade to the convertible all-in-one, but instead something more akin to a souped-up version of its predecessor. The design remains the same, with a 28-inch touchscreen display that’s adjustable via the Gravity Hinge. When lowered, artists can interact with it more along the lines of a Wacom Cintiq drawing tablet. Says Panay. we’ve rearchitected our Surface Studio processing engine utilizing an updated Intel Core H-35 processor, with up to 50% faster CPU performance. We’ve designed NVIDIA Ge Force RTX 3060 discrete graphics to double the graphics performance, achieving the most realistic ray-traced graphics when you craft 3D design or render models. We’ve enhanced and modernized the display, cameras, Studio Mics, and ports –including USB-C with Thunderbolt 4. With Windows 11, Surface Studio 2+also meets Secured-core PC standards. Image Credits: Microsoft Powered by the Intel Core u7, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, the Studio runs $4,300. The company will toss in a mouse, keyboard and stylus for another $200.

MicroLED tech could soon be improving AR/VR headsets • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Display technology, Hardware, StartupsNo Comments

Small displays like smartwatches and AR/VR applications are about to get a lot better, at least if Porotech has anything to do with it. Whereas regular LED displays have their red, green, and blue pixels side-by-side, in separate pixels, Porotech’s DynamicPixelTuning (DPT) tech promises to make every pixel capable of outputting all colors. The theory is that this gives displays four times the resolution in the same package; great in situations where the screens are very close to the human eye, such as in the head-mounted displays used for AR/VR. The image at the top of this story shows the difference; on the left, how Porotech’s microLEDs would render the top of an ‘O’ character on a display. On the right, is how a traditional display has to render a white arc. In theory, at least, the difference means much crisper visuals. The company says it is using a new class of Gallium Nitride materials, which enables its chips to produce any color visible to the human eyes. It explains that the DPT tech uses a modulated current to emit visible light covering the entire color spectrum on a single microLED chip, including pure white, which traditionally has been created by blasting the same amount of red, green and blue at your eye-holes all at once. “Mass-produced microLEDs will be pivotal for the future of displays, particularly the emerging AR and VR spaces. Our technology has solved a fundamental technical and engineering problem facing microLED display quality, manufacturability, and—most importantly—system integration,” says Porotech’s CEO and Co-Founder Dr Tongtong Zhu. “This doesn’t just herald widespread adoption of consumer-grade MR, VR, and AR. In fact, DPT also offers radical improvements in TV, signage, and smart wearables in both consumer and professional contexts. By allowing pixels to move beyond RGB and quadrupling the resolution of any given display, DPT is set to unlock new uses for displays in every segment of society.” The company shared a video of a prototype of the technology in action, although why it chose to do so is a little beyond me, because showing off how microLED technology works would probably be best done in person. Anyway; may the below further slake your curiosity: The company will be showing off the technology to the public for the first time at CES next year, so we’re planning to go take a look with our own eyes then.

DataGrail announces automated risk assessment tool and $45M investment • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in compliance, DataGrail, Enterprise, Privacy, third point venturesNo Comments

DataGrail has always focused on helping companies comply with the growing world of privacy regulation, building plug-ins to common data-heavy applications to help automate data discovery and compliance. Today, it’s building on that with a new automated risk monitoring solution that helps companies build third-party application risk assessments quickly. While they were at it, the startup also announced a $45 million Series C investment. Company CEO and co-founder Daniel Barber says that overall the product has evolved into a data privacy control center where customers can have a better understanding of their customer’s data privacy requirements. “We’ve seen the market move towards needing to control [privacy] because largely businesses have been out of control with how they’re managing privacy, while consumers are expecting control. And so we’ve really formed this thesis around the need for a privacy control center,” Barber explained. To help, the company has over 1400 plug-ins, up from 900 when we spoke last year, which help monitor what kinds of data are being collected and how the data moves across applications inside a company. He said they built the new Risk Monitor tool as a way to take advantage of the company’s understanding of these data flows and the risks involved. “We’re announcing this product called Risk Monitor, and what we’re really talking about here is as part of regulatory requirements, many of them require businesses to do assessments of risk,” he said. The tool is designed to help build these assessments, known as Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), in an automated way, reducing the amount labor involved to build a DPIA on the data used in a particular tool. This reduces the workload for privacy managers, while showing others inside a company what good privacy practice looks like. “What we’ve done is using our 1400 plus integrations and the existing information we know about risk and the third-party risk associated with those applications, we can pre-fill and create intelligent workflows that automate the entire [DPIA process] here to reduce the number of people involved and needed in the privacy program, while effectively centralizing that risk,” he said. In spite of the economic uncertainty that exists today, Barber says the company has grown revenue 3x since we spoke in March 2021 at the time of his company’s $30 million Series B announcement. It has also grown from 40 employees since last year to over 100 today with plans to perhaps double that in the next year powered by the new capital from the Series C investment. He says that as he builds the workforce, he is focused on building a diverse and inclusive company. “It’s something that’s kind of built into the DNA of the business from the beginning. So at the board level, we have equal women and men on the board, which is quite unusual for boards to have equal representation by gender, and we have equal representation at the executive level level as well,” he said. And they also have gender parity at the management level. While he understands that there are many dimensions to diversity, he has achieved gender diversity across all levels of the company. As for the $45 million Series C, that was led by Third Point Ventures with participation from Thomson Reuters Ventures and Sixty Degree Capital along with previous investors Felicis Ventures, Operator Collective, Next47, Cloud Apps Capital and other unnamed investors. The startup has now raised over $84 million.

Microsoft brings DALL-E 2 to the masses with Designer and Image Creator • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Apps, Azure OpenAI Service, dall-e 2, image generation, Microsoft, Microsoft Ignite 2022, OpenAI, Robotics & AINo Comments

Microsoft is making a major investment in DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s AI-powered system that generates images from text, by bringing it to first-party apps and services. During its Ignite conference this week, Microsoft announced that it’s integrating DALL-E 2 with the newly announced Microsoft Designer app and Image Creator tool in Bing and Microsoft Edge. With the advent of DALL-E 2 and open source alternatives like Stable Diffusion in recent years, AI image generators have exploded in popularity. In September, OpenAI said that more than 1.5 million users were actively creating over 2 million images a day with DALL-E 2, including artists, creative directors and authors. Brands such as Stitch Fix, Nestlé and Heinz have piloted DALL-E 2 for ad campaigns and other commercial use cases, while certain architectural firms have used DALL-E 2 and tools akin to it to conceptualize new buildings. “Microsoft and OpenAI have partnered closely since 2019 to accelerate breakthroughs in AI. We have teamed up with OpenAI to develop, test and responsibly scale the latest AI technologies,” Microsoft CVP of modern life, search and devices Liat Ben-Zur told ZebethMedia via email. “Microsoft is the exclusive provider of cloud computing services to OpenAI and is OpenAI’s preferred partner for commercializing new AI technologies. We’ve started to do this through programs like the Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot, and we’ll continue to explore solutions that harness the power of AI and advanced natural language generation.” Seeking to bring OpenAI’s tech to an even wider audience, Microsoft is launching Designer, a Canva-like web app that can generate designs for presentations, posters, digital postcards, invitations, graphics and more to share on social media and other channels. Designer — whose announcement leaked repeatedly this spring and summer — leverages user-created content and DALL-E 2 to ideate designs, with drop-downs and text boxes for further customization and personalization. Within Designer, users can choose from various templates to get started on specific, defined-dimensions designs for platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn Facebook ads and Instagram Stories. Prebuilt templates are available from the web, as are shapes, photos, icons and headings that can be added to projects. Image Creator in Microsoft Edge and Bing. “Microsoft Designer is powered by AI technology, including DALL-E 2, which means the ability to instantly generate a variety of designs,” Ben-Zur continued. “[It] helps you bring your ideas to life. Designer will remain free during a limited preview period, Microsoft says — users can sign up starting today. Once the Designer app is generally available, it’ll be included in Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions and have “some” functionality free to use for non-subscribers, though Microsoft didn’t elaborate. Another new Microsoft-developed app underpinned by DALL-E 2 is Image Creator, heading to Bing and Edge in the coming weeks. As the name implies, Image Creator — accessed via the Bing Images tab or bing.com/create, or through the Image Creator icon in the sidebar within Edge — generates art given a text prompt by funneling requests to DALL-E 2, acting like a frontend client for OpenAI’s still-in-beta DALL-E 2 service. Typing in a description of something, any additional context, like location or activity, and an art style will yield an image from Image Creator. “Image Creator will soon create images that don’t yet exist, limited only by your imagination,” Ben-Zur added. Unlike Designer, Image Creator in Bing and Edge will be completely free to use, but Microsoft — wary of potential abuse and misuse — says it’ll take a “measured approach” to rolling out the app. Image Creator will initially only be available in preview for select geographies, which Microsoft says will allow it to gather feedback before expanding the app further. Microsoft Designer. Some image-generating systems have been used to create objectionable content, like graphic violence and pornographic, nonconsensual celebrity deepfakes. The organization funding the development of Stable Diffusion, Stability AI, was even the subject of a critical recent letter from U.S. House Representative Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA) to the National Security Advisor (NSA) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in which she urged the NSA and OSTP to address the release of “unsafe AI models” that “do not moderate content made on their platforms.” Image-generating AI can also pick up on the biases and toxicities embedded in the millions of images from the web used to train them. OpenAI itself noted in an academic paper that an open source implementation of DALL-E could be trained to make stereotypical associations like generating images of white-passing men in business suits for terms like “CEO,” for example. In response to questions about mitigation measures in Designer and Image Creator, Microsoft noted that OpenAI removed explicit sexual and violent content from the dataset used to train DALL-E 2. But Microsoft also said that it took steps of its own, including deploying filters to limit the generation of images that violate content policy, additional query blocking on sensitive topics and technology to deliver “more diverse” images to results. Users will have to agree to terms of use and the aforementioned content policy to start using Designer and Image Creator with their Microsoft account. If a user requests an image deemed inappropriate by Microsoft’s automated filters, they’ll get a warning. If they repeatedly violate the content policy, they’ll be banned, but have a chance to appeal. “It’s important, with early technologies like DALL-E 2, to acknowledge that this is new, and we expect it to continue to evolve and improve,” Ben-Zur said. “We take our commitment to responsible AI seriously … We will not allow users to generate violent content, we may distort people’s faces and won’t show text strings used as input.” Addressing some of the legal questions that’ve sprung up recently around AI-powered image generation systems, Microsoft says that users will have “full” usage rights to commercialize the images they create with Designer and Image Creator. (Among other hosts, Getty Images has banned the upload and sale of illustrations generated using DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and similar tools, citing fair use concerns about training

Dedrone’s counter-drone jammer uses science to stop drones in their tracks • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Dedrone, drones, Hardware, military, SecurityNo Comments

Drones are lovely for all sorts of things, including shooting incredible 700-shot gigapixel images over Burning Man, for example. But they can also be used for nefarious purposes, carrying explosives or scaring the bejesus out of the Secret Service as they are trying to protect the prez. Dedrone has had a series of antidrone tools with more than 700 solutions already in the hands of military forces around the world. Today, the company announced it’s adding a handheld system that can jam radio frequencies, effectively preventing drone pilots from controlling their own drones. Once the connection is severed, what happens next depends on the drone, and how it is programmed to behave after it loses contact with its pilot. Some will just set down wherever they are, others will try to navigate back to the take-off location. It is unclear what would happen if a drone operates autonomously with a programmed path, or potentially some sort of self-flying algorithm taking it toward its target. The new DedroneDefender is aimed at civilian, state and local law enforcement in urban environments. Weighing in at 7.5 pounds and 22 inches long, it uses narrow-band (or “comb”) jamming to ensure as little interference with other devices as possible. Once communications are interrupted on a drone, the tool enters a preprogrammed safety mode to minimize risk to others and damage to the drone, the company claims. “DroneDefender is a valuable resource for extreme hostile environments, as proven by our federal and military customers,” said Aaditya Devarakonda, CEO of Dedrone. “DedroneDefender extends that security to law enforcement and is a vital tool in a layered defense approach. It is easy to implement and use for drone mitigation, especially when combined with the threat prioritization provided by DedroneTracker. Our solution library is continuously updated to ensure both DroneDefender and DedroneDefender are able to mitigate even the newest manufactured and DIY drones.” You won’t be able to buy them yourself, though. For one thing, US law prohibits disabling of aircraft; DoD or Homeland Security may be authorized to disable a drone they identify as a terrorist threat (let’s say at the Super Bowl) but local police or stadium security cannot legally bring the drone down under current law. Unless you have very deep pockets and some pretty special authorizations, you’re out of luck. DedroneDefender price range is in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Moon set for November traffic jam as both ispace and NASA target launches • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in artemis i, ispace, NASA, SpaceNo Comments

If all goes to plan, Florida’s Space Coast could see two separate lunar missions take off in November. Japanese startup ispace said Wednesday it is targeting a launch window of November 9-15 for its first lunar lander mission. Separately, NASA set a trio of possible November launch dates for Artemis I, the first in a series of planned launches to return humans to the Moon by the middle of the decade. For NASA, these November dates are backup opportunities after the agency decided to scrub August’s initial launch attempts due to technical issues. The two missions are part of an increasingly widespread push amongst private industry and government space agencies to conduct more science and explore commercial activities on our large natural satellite. Artemis I is an uncrewed flight test of the massive Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule; chiefly, it will test Orion’s performance in a stable orbit around the moon and the capabilities of its heat shield when it reenters Earth’s atmosphere. It will be followed by Artemis II in 2024, which will be a crewed flight test; then that will be followed by Artemis III the following year, which will land humans, including the first woman and the first person of color, on the moon. NASA eventually aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon. Engineers confirmed “minimal work is required” to prepare the Artemis I launch system for its return to the launch pad. The rocket had to be rolled back to NASA’s hangar at Kennedy Space Center due to Hurricane Ian, which swept across Florida at the end of September. NASA said it would return it to the launch pad as early as November 4. The first launch opportunity opens on November 14 at 12:07 AM EST, with two backup opportunities on November 16 and November 19. Like NASA, Tokyo-based ispace is planning its own lunar exploration program. This first mission under the program, dubbed Mission 1 (M1), will see an ispace Hakuto-R lunar lander carry multiple payloads, including a 22-pound rover for the United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center, to the surface of the moon. M1 will head to space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket; the 7.5 foot-tall Hakuto-R will land on the moon approximately three months after launch. ispace is planning a second mission, Mission 2, for 2023. For that mission, Hakuto-R will deliver a small ispace rover to collect data for the startup’s subsequent lunar missions.

6 tips for launching a blockchain startup • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in blockchain, Column, Crypto, DeFi, EC Blockchain, EC Column, EC Cryptocurrency, EC How To, startup strategy, StartupsNo Comments

Wolfgang Rückerl Contributor These days, a blockchain startup founder should expect to navigate challenging waters. Even in the best of times, founders must both prepare for a bull market and be ready for possibly bearish territory. Having a solid roadmap, real-world use cases and a war chest are only a small part of a blockchain startup’s survival strategy. Founders also need to be aware that while non-crypto startups can offer useful and transferrable launch strategies, the road to achieving success in the blockchain industry is paved differently. Here are tips every blockchain founder should consider before launching. Bear the market conditions in mind Bear markets appear more attractive to blockchain businesses looking to launch. But before suiting up for winter, founders must assess whether it’s worth waiting to launch until market conditions are better. In the web3 world of horizontal technologies, you’ll be running against the wind if you wait to build relationships until you’ve built a technology. Evaluate your startup with the same criteria investors use during a bear market. Investors want to see a strong roadmap with deadlines and benchmarks that don’t simply come and go with no activity, as this is a signal to investors that a slow rug pull is underway. Evidence of a diversified war chest that you can draw from is pivotal, especially when providing returns on locked assets is the main impetus for attaining liquidity. In addition, analyze the market situation from a technical standpoint: The bear market is an attractive time to launch, but it’s also a time to go heads-down and focus on building your product. Regardless of market conditions, make use of your reward programs for loyal community members by offering staking rewards, airdrops and giveaways without needing to raise additional capital, similar to the traditional business world. Opt for longer vesting schedules In the non-crypto startup scene, it’s common to include compensation packages as an incentive for employees to perform well. Blockchain startups do this during the presale period of an initial coin offering using a method called vesting, where they lock and release assets (usually in the form of tokens) over a certain period. In so doing, they give their team, investors and advisers the right to certain assets such as retirement and stock options. If you choose this path, set up the token metrics and the vesting period for the gradual release of these tokens in a way that doesn’t put too much pressure on the token itself. Many crypto projects unlock and distribute their tokens every three months, and they’re finding private investors dumping them on the market, which is bad for the team and the community. In turn, retail investors also begin selling up front because they know a dump is coming. Opt for longer vesting schedules — between three and five years — to show that you have a financial incentive to continue project development. Split the release of the tokens: Release the private sale investor tokens one month, the adviser tokens the next month and the team tokens a month later. If it’s all in one month, the risk for retail investors will be too high. Don’t underestimate crypto regulations