Author : zebethcontrol

Tiger Global, Blume back startup bringing safety — and intelligence — to EVs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in blume ventures, electric vehicles, EV, Startups, tiger global, TransportationNo Comments

Tiger Global’s latest investment in India is Vecmocon, a startup building solutions to bring safety and reliability alongside intelligence and health monitoring to light electric vehicles (EVs), addressing concerns that are curtailing the sales of electric scooters in the South Asian market. Unlike traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles that have existed for more than 100 years, EVs are pretty new to the market. The data recently shared by the Indian government shows that the country has over 1.3 million EVs, compared to more than 278 million non-EVs. The cost of service and turnaround time of an EV in the country are also quite high compared to those of traditional combustion engine-powered counterparts. A number of EVs, especially EV scooters, that are available in the Indian market are also not meeting quality standards. Some have even caught fire in the recent past. Vecmocon, an abbreviation for vector motor control, is trying to solve all this using its core EV components and software that it sells to OEMs. The New Delhi-based startup additionally offers platforms for cloud integration to enable remote diagnostics for fleet operations. “For electric vehicles to happen, its ecosystem has to happen, and that ecosystem has to be data-driven. It has to be digitally enabled for a quick evolution,” said Peeyush Asati, co-founder and CEO of Vecmocon, in an interview with ZebethMedia. IIT Delhi alumnus Asati co-founded the startup with Shivam Wankhede and Adarshkumar B — alumni of IIT Delhi and Indian School of Business (ISB), respectively, in August 2016. Before starting their venture, the trio provided pro bono consultancy to e-rickshaw manufacturers. That helped them notice the industry’s strong reliance on China. “The Chinese component manufacturers are not cooperating because the ecosystem in China around EVs is fundamentally different from how it is in India. The geography is diverse, the use cases of how people use electric vehicles are two-wheelers, kind of in terms of culture in terms of behavior, in terms of geography, all of it was different,” Asati said. All this brought them to the conclusion that while many companies have started building the mechanical side of things for EVs locally in the market, the core tech side continues to leave a lot to be desired. Vecmocon offers battery management systems, vehicle intelligence modules, instrument clusters and chargers, among other components. It targets light EV manufacturers making two-wheelers, three-wheelers, forklifts and electric tractors at the moment, as those are the lowest hanging fruits, said Asati. He believes electric cars would still take some time to enter the Indian market due to the lack of physical infrastructure, though the solutions that Vecmocon makes are also ready for four-wheelers. The co-founder said the startup’s battery management systems comply with the Automotive Industry Standards (AIS)-156 that the Indian government introduced last month to address EV battery fire issues. The safety standards are yet to become mandatory for manufacturers, though. “We have already executed those recommendations in our previous generation and improved on them further. So, we are ahead in terms of safety and reliability,” he said. Now they secured some much-needed fuel to expand. Tiger Global co-led the pre-Series A round of $5.2 million in Vecmocon along with Blume Ventures. “We are impressed with the deep commitment and progress that Peeyush, Adarshkumar and Shivam have made to solve long-term problems in India’s EV industry, and we are excited to partner with them as they build a high-quality global automotive tech company to support the adoption of EVs,” Connie Lee, partner, Tiger Global, said in a prepared statement. The funding from the all-equity round will be used to build a business around the offerings created by Vecmocon, Asati said. He noted that the startup is planning to hire sales, HR, operations and finance people in the team, which currently has 20 engineers developing different hardware and software solutions. Vecmocon, which is currently using labs at IIT Delhi, also plans to build its in-house labs to test and develop new offerings for the market. “An electric vehicle is a technologically advanced product. For the larger number of OEMs, it is hard to develop the expertise to design and perfect the software and hardware components like a BMS (battery management system) or VIM (vehicle intelligence module). Such customers stand to win greatly by adopting Vecmocon’s platform which allows them to launch high-performance vehicles faster to the market. Over the last 5 years, Vecmocon has built a unique capability to engineer such data intensive components and deliver a highly robust and safe system,” said Arpit Agarwal, director, Blume Ventures. In this financial year, Vecmocon claims to have already orders of around $5 million to execute — giving it touch points with 30,000-40,000 odd vehicles. Asati said that the plan is to power more than 100,000 vehicles by next year and the hit the milestone of 500,000 by 2025. The startup also does not want to limit itself to India, as it has started working in a pilot phase with clients in global markets and has its initial customers in the U.S., Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Prior to the pre-Series A funding, Vecmocon had raised $300,000 in a strategic seed round in 2019 from Tessellate Tech Ventures. It also received seed support in a debt and equity mix from India’s Department of Science and Technology (DST).

Noom lays off more employees amid CFO departure • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in StartupsNo Comments

Noom, a health coaching platform valued at $3.7 billion last year, is laying off a portion of staff for the second time in a matter of months, ZebethMedia has learned from sources. Noom has laid off 10% of its staff, or around 500 people, which is a reduction that mostly impacts its coaching team. It’s the second layoff impacting Noom’s coaching team in a matter of months, impacting hundreds of employees. “Noom has experienced extraordinary growth over the past several years, and it’s essential that we are structured in a way that enables us to continue growing over the long term,” a Noom spokesperson said over e-mail. “We recently made the difficult decision to reduce the number of Noom employees. We are deeply grateful for their contributions to Noom, and we wish them continued success.” Noom declined to answer questions regarding scale of layoffs, separation packages, and strategy beyond this statement. The startup, which has raised over $650 million in funding since launching in 2008, is partially known for its controversial approach to weight loss and dieting. Now, however, it’s showing tensions from a personnel front. Noom’s scaleback of its coaching services suggests a departure from the platform’s original pitch, which was to combine intelligent nutrition with exercise coaching. In 2020, Noom hit $400 million in revenue using this strategy. One year later, Noom expanded its coaching services by launching a mental health vertical. Its current website shows a glimpse of how Noom thinks, or at least thought, about coaching as its strategy. “Welcome to the Noomily,” Noom’s website reads. “Our coaches guide users through the ups and downs of the weight loss journey with empathy and compassion. They help users better understand themselves through personalized action plans that are based on their individual goals, preferences, and lifestyle.” The landing page for coaches goes on to explain the daily life of a Noom coach, which ranges from helping clients develop “a healthy lifestyle” and “contribute to the growth of something amazing.” Coaches are able to enroll in health plans after 90 days of employment, the website said. Now, however, that advertising has a different tone. The company is reportedly moving more to scheduled video calling instead of live chat. According to a memo obtained by ZebethMedia, Noom co-founders Artem Petakov and Saeju Jeong addressed the layoffs to employees and said that it was critical for the company to “manage expenses, increase efficiency and be more effective about how we achieve our mission” despite “significantly improving” company financials. “Today’s decisions put us in a position where we can continue to place big bets for the next year, and innovate and grow in the years ahead,” the co-founders wrote in the internal memo. Today’s layoff comes right as the company’s CFO, Mike Noonan, leaves to join TripAdvisor, the Wall Street Journal reports. A Noom spokesperson said over e-mail that the layoffs and CFO departure are two “separate, unrelated announcements.” In the internal memo, the co-founders went on to say that the startup‘s big bet is focused on creating a more comprehensive mind and body platform with a higher degree of personalization. The co-founders nodded to their enterprise offering as “another bet that has the potential to dramatically expand our customer base.” “Finally, over the next few days, we may see unkind headlines, but ask that you maintain focus on what’s most important now: caring for our departing colleagues like family, by treating them with humanity and respect,” the co-founders wrote. The company was last known to be reportedly planning for a 2022 IPO, at a $10 billion valuation.

How to go from popular to profitable during a downturn • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Column, EC Column, EC How To, product led sales, Product-led growth strategy, profitability, StartupsNo Comments

Nick Mills is a go-to-market leader with more than 20 years of experience building tech companies, including roles at Stripe, Facebook and CircleCI, and supporting early-stage startups as an investor and adviser. He is currently president at Pitch. As a tougher funding climate starts to bite, it’s time to ditch the past decade’s “growth-at-all-costs” mantra. Telling investors about your viral user growth is no longer enough — they want to know how it translates to revenue, resilience and runway. The ongoing market uncertainty is a particularly loud wake-up call for founders pursuing product-led growth. The go-to-market motion pioneered by the likes of Slack and Dropbox revolutionized how teams adopt and purchase software. However, even the best PLG products don’t propel their own viral popularity forever, and all companies eventually face a similar challenge: To keep growing, sales teams must be hired and a pipeline must be built. As VC funding dries up, a particularly perilous path lies ahead for PLG startups. Those on the path to revenue growth have no margin for error, and founders face a series of tough calls: which teams to layer in, when to do so and how to set them up for success. These decisions will dictate whether a PLG-driven startup will sink or swim. I’ve spent more than two decades building, scaling and advising teams tasked with bringing software products to market. While it’s true that every business is different, there are a few commonalities in every go-to-market journey I’ve been a part of. Don’t fear the demand plateau — plan for it. Here’s a roadmap founders can use to build on their PLG strategy and plot a route from product-led popularity to sustainable profitability. Size up the piece of the pie you can win now The serviceable addressable market (SAM) is where the go-to-market journey really begins. The little sibling of the total addressable market (TAM), a figure often thrown about during fundraising, the SAM is the piece of that pie you can win right now. It’s vital to understand which market segments your product can address and your go-to-market team can tackle. To gain that understanding, here are a few questions you should be asking: Which qualities do our existing customers share? What problems do they currently face? How do they approach adopting and buying software? Invest the time to establish the criteria that define your ideal customer profile. Searching for your SAM is a continuous process, especially as the capabilities of your team and product expand, but arriving at a clear understanding of your initial SAM is milestone No. 1 in your go-to-market journey. Qualify your best leads Your search for the SAM should have given you a sense of the sign-ups you’re trying to drive, and with any luck, you’ve won some active users. With your acquisition channels up and running, the next milestone in your go-to-market journey is defining a product-qualified lead (PQL).

Meta partners with Microsoft to bring Teams, Windows apps and games to Quest devices • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Apps, Gaming, meta, Meta Connect 2022, Microsoft, Quest, Quest Pro, xboxNo Comments

Meta today announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring new content, including Windows apps and Teams tie-ins, to Meta’s metaverse hardware efforts. During Meta’s Connect conference this morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Microsoft Teams will integrate with Quest devices and that Microsoft will provide a way to stream Windows apps to Meta’s headsets. Nadella also revealed that Microsoft’s streaming game service, Xbox Cloud Gaming, will arrive on Quest devices sometime within the coming months. Image Credits: Meta “We’re bringing the Microsoft Teams immersive meeting experience to Meta Quest in order to give people new ways to connect with each other,” Nadella said, noting that custom avatars will eventually come to the experience. Horizon Workrooms, Meta’s VR space for collaboration, will connect with Teams, he added — allowing people to join a Teams meeting directly from Workrooms. “Now, you can connect, share and collaborate as though you are together in person,” Nadella added. On the Windows end, Nadella said that Microsoft 365 will come to Quest in a way that lets users interact with content from productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. The Verge’s Tom Warren notes that these aren’t full-blown versions of apps designed for VR, importantly; They’re Progressive Web Apps, rather. “You [will] have a new way to securely stream the entire Windows experience, including all the personalized app content settings to your VR device with the full power [of Windows,]” Nadella said. “We’ve been thinking about how to bring the power of Microsoft 365 and Windows 365 to 3D spaces to really help drive productivity and enable you to create, communicate and collaborate in completely new ways.” Image Credits: Meta As for Xbox Cloud Gaming, on the Quest, it’ll stream games to a 2D VR screen, supporting existing Xbox controllers. But Nadella hinted that additional features might arrive down the line. Microsoft’s team-up with Meta comes as the former dials back its internal VR and AR hardware projects, including HoloLens. Windows Mixed Reality platform, Microsoft’s software foundation built into Windows 10 to support VR headsets, never quite took off in the way the company hoped. Early this year, Business Insider reported that Microsoft scrapped plans for the third generation of HoloLens in favor of partnering with Samsung on a new “mixed-reality” device. Microsoft pushed back on the HoloLens assertions. But then, one of the executives leading HoloLens’ development, Alex Kipman, resigned after allegations of misconduct including inappropriate sexual behavior, leaving the division in flux. That being said, Microsoft has shown a keen interest in investing in creating software for the metaverse — whatever form it might take. At its Ignite conference last year, the company announced Mesh for Teams, which combines the company’s Mesh platform for powering shared experiences in virtual reality, augmented reality and elsewhere with Teams and its built-in productivity tools.

Meta and news outlet’s spar deepens India’s trust deficit • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Facebook, india, Media & Entertainment, meta, SocialNo Comments

Tech giants and news organizations sparring over news reporting isn’t new. Companies often complain to journalists about getting nuances wrong and usually air their dismay “off the record.” Journalists usually agree to include the rebuttals provided the companies can offer the same assertions on-record. The companies don’t follow through and the conversation typically ends there and the world never finds out about what is more often than not a very mundane thing. That’s one of the factors that makes Indian news outlet The Wire’s reporting this week on Instagram and Meta’s responses remarkable. Lawmakers and newsrooms in the U.S. and India are closely watching one of the strangest episodes of a newsroom and its subject publicly disputing — and doubling down on their claims. The Wire, an organization known best for holding the ruling party to account in a way that very few do, reported on Monday that Facebook has given governing party BJP’s top digital operative an unchecked ability to remove content from the platform. The report, which relies on what it claims are internal documents, appears to advance WSJ’s reporting of an internal company program called XCheck, where Facebook shields millions of VIP users from the company’s normal enforcement process. Meta insists that the XCheck program “has nothing to do with the ability to report posts” and has publicly called the documents “fabricated.” Andy Stone, Meta’s comms, tweeted: “The posts in question were surfaced for review by automated systems, not humans. And the underlying documentation appears to be fabricated.” The unexpected twist came on Tuesday, when Wire doubled down on its reporting, claiming to include a picture that appeared to show an alleged email Stone sent to internal teams where he is questioning members how the documents leaked. The picture also showed that Facebook maintains a watchlist of journalists. Wire’s response immediately went viral for several hours and most people believed it. In a way that separates it from most other companies, Facebook has earned a reputation where its denials are not really taken on face value. This is the reason why at least two major outlets in India have chosen not to acknowledge Wire’s story — nor Meta’s denials of those reporting, according to two people familiar with the matter. (Though in its credit, Facebook is suing the Indian government over right to users’ privacy.) The matter was considered closed, and it appeared that Facebook, which identifies India as its largest market by users, was trying to mislead again. But the drama’s lifespan has been extended as Meta has since doubled down on its denial, saying Meta’s Stone’s purported email in the story is “fake.” Guy Rosen, the chief security information officer at Meta, said: “The supposed email address from which it was sent isn’t even Stone’s current email address, and the ‘to’ address isn’t one we use here either. There is no such email. That same story makes reference to an internal journalist ‘watchlist.’ There is no such list.” Facebook, like many other companies, does maintain dossiers on journalists. I (Manish) know this because they accidentally sent me the link to one about five years ago. Meta also does maintain email addresses with the fb.com domain. (The generic press contact remains a fb.com email. Though that’s not proof that Stone still actively uses a fb.com email.) Wire is standing by its reporting. However, if Meta is proven right, tricking a reputable outlet into running an explosive story that could’ve been easily refuted by a big megacorp like Meta would damage press credibility across India at a time when the country’s media is increasingly grappling with a series of existential crises. Who would have the least to lose and most to gain here, especially if the goal was to undermine credibility in the press? These documents were triangulated with other elements of the story that we reported. Meta’s strategy is to try and push us in to a corner with its preposterous “fabrication” charge and force us to reveal information which may compromise our sources. This isn’t going to happen! 2/ — Siddharth (@svaradarajan) October 11, 2022

Meta announces legs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Facebook, Gaming, meta, Meta Connect 2022No Comments

Meta didn’t hold back with their announcements at Meta Connect this year. As Facebook has done every year or so, the company is shaking up their avatar products. This year as Meta focuses more heavily on the metaverse, the company made a big addition to their updated higher-detail avatars: legs. The announcement that the avatars, which were previously floating torsos with arms and heads, now have evolved to walk was something Zuckerberg was very excited about with his avatar jumping for joy during the keynote. Alongside announcements around the appearance and movements of the new full body avatars, Meta also announced that there will soon be an avatar store where people will be able to spend real money to buy accessories for their Meta avatar. There was notably no mention of NFTs.

It’s painful how hellbent Mark Zuckerberg is on convincing us that VR is a thing • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in mark Zuckerberg metaverse, Media & Entertainment, Meta Connect 2022No Comments

At Meta Connect 2022, the company’s annual developer conference for its VR efforts and Oculus hardware platform, the company announced a lot of stuff — but what it communicated more effectively than anything else was just how incredibly thirsty — one might even say desperate — Mark Zuckerberg is for his metaverse bet to pay off. Before I get ahead of myself, let me be clear that I understand all of these prerecorded presentations given by large tech companies are extended advertisements. No one’s disputing that, but Zuck’s overscripted and overproduced dev event keynote today was easily the hardest sell for not just a product or a platform, but the premise upon which it’s based, I can ever recall seeing in a decade in tech. The presentation basically kicked off with Mark assuring us that VR is bigger than ever, though almost entirely in relative terms. It’d be hard for it not to be, given the pace of its growth to date since its advent (counting either from the days of the first VR headsets or what you might call “the modern era,” when the original Oculus Rift finally made its ways to consumers in 2016. It then went into a series of cherry-picked revenue numbers set up by Facebook CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, a direct appeal to an ecosystem in need of fleshing out. These were mostly individual highlights, however, rather than the cumulative rapidly incrementing ecosystem numbers that Apple used to balloon its own mobile App Store efforts through its early days. The rest of the presentation was basically a series of hand-wavy “announcements” (many reheated versions of prior ones) that aimed to define use cases and domains in which the metaverse and VR would actually be useful to people. Zuck covered all the old stand-bys — social, gaming, fitness and “future of work.” None looked significantly improved or capable of acting as a turning point in terms of mass adoption, and most had either vague or nonexistent ship dates. One of the biggest swings involved a partnership with Microsoft, which was jointly announced by Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella. Basically, Mark is so desperate to get people in the metaverse that he’s allied with an erstwhile competitor, in a move reminiscent of when Steve Jobs welcomed Bill Gates via satellite link during the Macworld Boston keynote in 1997. That worked well, but it’s not yet clear if this will. Nadella himself articulated the main and recurring theme of VR: “it’s early days.” Only around 5,400 people were watching in VR when my colleague Taylor tuned in partway through the presentation, just before Mark switched over to using his new avatar and finally actually presenting in the metaverse itself. The avatar itself was a big improvement from prior iterations; it was a fully animated version of the better-looking version Mark showed off after his much-mocked announcement of Horizon’s expansion to France and Spain. It looked better, yes, but it sure didn’t look like the future.

Brex, valued at $12.3B earlier this year, lays off 11% of staff as part of restructuring • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in Brex, corporate spend, Fintech, Layoffs, StartupsNo Comments

The startup’s CFO is departing to join Rippling, which recently entered the spend management space Mary Ann Azevedo 12 hours Corporate spend management startup Brex has laid off 136 people, or 11% of its staff, across all departments as part of a restructuring, the company has told ZebethMedia exclusively. After the layoffs, Brex has just over 1,150 employees. It’s been a tumultuous year for Brex, which announced in April that it was leaning into the enterprise segment. That new focus led to the company announcing in June that it would no longer work with small businesses or non professionally funded startups. The latter news caused a bit of an uproar — and some feelings of abandonment — in the startup community, which Brex initially set out to serve. Internally, the move apparently left less of a need for certain internal staff who were focused on serving those SMBs. Brex said it initially tried to “repurpose” as many roles as it could before ultimately deciding it had to let some people go. The layoffs also are evidence that even decacorns are not immune to the challenging macro and fundraising environment that 2022 has brought us. It was exactly nine months ago that Brex confirmed that it had raised $300 million in a Series D-2 round at a $12.3 billion valuation. Greenoaks Capital and TCV co-led that financing, which brought the three-year-old San Francisco-based startup’s total raised to $1.2 billion. Unsurprisingly, Brex cited the challenging macro environment in its decision. In a blog post, co-founder and co-CEO Pedro Franceschi wrote: Late last year we decided to sharpen our focus and serve fewer customers really well. Today’s change is a continuation of this. We’ve been laser-focused on serving early-stage startups and scaled companies this year, and we’re very grateful for the momentum we’ve seen on Empower since we launched in April. While we’re fortunate to be in a strong financial position with many years of runway, the new macro environment is materially different from the first five years of Brex, and warrants a new level of focus and financial discipline. We know the importance that our customers place on Brex’s financial strength, and this change will put us on a path to sustainable profitability over the next few years. Over the summer, Sam Blond left his role as chief revenue officer at Brex to become an investor at Founders Fund. His replacement, Doug Adamic, had over 16 years experience at SAP/Concur — most recently as that company’s chief revenue officer — and is helping drive enterprise sales, according to the company. More recently, sources told ZebethMedia that Adam Swiecicki is stepping down from his role as chief financial officer at Brex, a position he assumed late last year when Michael Tannenbaum took on the position of chief operating officer. He will be joining workforce platform Rippling, which recently entered the spend management space, as CFO. Brex confirmed Swiecicki’s impending move, with co-founder and co-CEO Henrique Dubugras telling ZebethMedia: “We’re happy for Adam in his next role and it’s always great to see our team land with great companies. Rippling is a Brex partner and is focused on the small business market, while Brex has moved upmarket. From our side, Michael Tannenbaum will resume the role of CFO.” Moving forward, Tannenbaum — who began serving as CFO initially in 2017 — will serve in both positions. Swiecicki’s decision to leave is reportedly unrelated to the layoff. In an attempt to soften the blow for the laid-off workers, Brex said the affected employees will receive eight weeks of pay, with an additional two weeks for each complete year of service. For those with less than one year at the company, the startup said it is waiving the equity cliff. And for those with options, it is offering to extend the exercise period to seven years. Impacted workers will have access to current healthcare benefits through the end of the month, and then Brex says it will pay for six months of health insurance. The company says it is also dedicating part of its recruiting team to help those impacted “find new opportunities,” and will prioritize hiring them back “as roles open up over time.” Additionally, Brex is letting all impacted employees keep their computers. Brex started its life focused on providing credit cards aimed mainly at startups and SMBs. It gradually evolved its model with the aim of serving as a one-stop finance shop for these companies before its aforementioned pivot to a focus on enterprise earlier this year. A company spokesperson told ZebethMedia that the company is “getting some really strong signals on Empower,” its new enterprise-focused software offering. Since Empower’s April launch, its monthly active user count has grown 5x month-over-month “on an increasingly large base,” the spokesperson added. It also, the company said, passed $3 billion in annualized processing volume in less than three months of the platform going live. Meanwhile, the spokesperson told ZebethMedia that Brex cash deposits are up 100% year over year, noting that rising interest rates have actually increased the revenue in its deposits business. Brex declined to share hard revenue figures, saying only that “growth — even in this environment — is remaining quite strong.” The company obviously took a big chance by betting on the enterprise space. It will be interesting to see how that bet plays out. Reporter’s note: The story was updated post-publication to clarify that Swiecicki will be joining Rippling as CFO. My weekly fintech newsletter, The Interchange, launched on May 1! Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Meta wants you to drop $1,499 on a headset to… go to work • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in Apps, meta, Meta Connect 2022, virtual desktopNo Comments

What happens when you’re working away from your office, so you don’t have your big desk and multiple large monitors with you? You could just use your laptop and make do. Or, you could buy a $1,499 Quest Pro, which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says is built with work specifically in mind. Today, in Horizon Workrooms, Meta is adding a Personal Office feature, which lets you create your own custom slice of the metaverse to… work. “One of the best things in VR is you can create environments that go beyond what’s possible in the physical world,” Zuckerberg said in the Meta Connect presentation today. “Of course, that goes for productivity setups too, so you have instant access to your perfect workspace that’s set up just how you want, no matter where you are.” A similar app, Virtual Desktop, first became available on the Oculus Rift (RIP to Oculus branding) in 2016. So, the idea of bringing your computer into VR isn’t exactly new. But from the brief glimpse we saw in today’s presentation, it looks like Meta has elevated their idea a bit. Image Credits: Meta “Eventually, we think that your Quest could be the only monitor that you’ll actually need,” said Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. No matter how advanced a virtual workspace gets, it’s hard to imagine people using a VR headset to work eight-hour days. If people already suffer from eye strain and headaches from working at a computer (staring through my blue light glasses as I type this), will they really want to strap screens to their face? Still, Meta’s executives are confident that this is the way forward. “There’s an opportunity for a VR headset designed from the ground up to be great for work, as well as playing games and hanging out,” Zuckerberg said, before unveiling the Quest Pro, along with Meta’s partnership with Microsoft.

Many Americans treat driver assist systems like self-driving • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in ADAS, GM Super Cruise, Tesla Autopilot, TransportationNo Comments

Many Americans feel comfortable treating their advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which partially automate certain driving functions, as full self-driving systems, according to a study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The survey explored habits, expectations and attitudes among regular users of General Motors Super Cruise, Nissan/Infiniti ProPILOT Assist and Tesla Autopilot. A total of 604 participants spread more or less evenly across the different brands took part in the survey from January to November 2021. All three groups were found to be more likely to engage in non-driving related activities — like texting or eating — while using their systems than when driving manually. That was especially true for Super Cruise and Autopilot users, who were more likely to report performing activities that would take their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road. Super Cruise and Autopilot users also said they could perform these types of tasks better and more often while using their systems, according to the study. A total of 53% of Super Cruise users, 42% of Autopilot users and 12% of ProPILOT Assist users said they were comfortable treating their systems as self-driving. The study’s publishing follows a series of incidents involving the safety of Tesla’s Autopilot system, and by extension, its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system, the company’s more advanced ADAS. Last month, some Tesla drivers filed suit against the company for falsely advertising the autonomous capabilities of Autopilot and FSD, something California’s Department of Motor Vehicles has also recently accused Tesla of. In August, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) asked Tesla to provide more information about its cabin camera — which is meant to monitor the alertness of drivers using Autopilot and FSD — as part of its ongoing probe into 830,000 Teslas that include Autopilot. NHTSA is currently investigating 16 crashes in which Tesla owners had potentially engaged such systems before crashing into stationary emergency vehicles. The agency has opened a total 39 special investigations into Autopilot-related crashes since 2016. GM’s Super Cruise, by comparison, has been probed by NHTSA only twice in the same timespan, according to NHTSA data. Since Super Cruise launched in 2017, the ADAS has appeared on over 40,000 vehicles, so it’s a smaller pool than Tesla’s Autopilot which comes standard on all new Teslas. Super Cruise’s safeguards have also been described as more robust than Tesla’s. Consumer Reports issued ratings for ADAS on certain vehicles earlier this year, and found that Super Cruise and Ford’s Blue Cruise were the only automakers to receive two extra points for having systems that encourage safe driving. During CR’s tests of different GM vehicles, the agency said that each delivered “multiple warnings to grab an inattentive driver’s attention.” “If the driver still does not react, the system will start to slow the car down on its own, eventually bringing it to a stop. The system won’t operate if the camera is covered,” according to a statement from CR. With Tesla Model Y and S vehicles with software version 11.0, drivers could use Autopilot even with the vehicle’s cabin camera fully covered, according to CR. If the camera detected the driver’s eyes were off the road, it would shorten how long the driver could take their hands off the wheel. However, as long as the driver’s hands remained on the wheel, CR found no warnings if the eyes were off the road. The IIHS survey found that some drivers in the survey said such user safeguards, like attention reminders and lockouts, were annoying and they would try to circumvent them. However, most people said they found those safeguards helpful and felt safer with them. The study suggests that driver monitoring systems and “multifaceted, proactive user-centric safeguards” are key to shaping proper behavior and understanding about drivers’ roles while using partial driving automation. “Some regular users have a poor understanding of their technology’s limits,” the study reads. “System design appears to contribute to user perceptions and behavior.” This article was updated with special investigation data from NHTSA and the number of vehicles with Super Cruise from GM.