Author : zebethcontrol

Coinbase CEO dives into market madness at TC Sessions: Crypto • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in brian armstrong, coinbase, Crypto, cryptocurrencies, TC Sessions: Crypto, TC Sessions: Crypto 2022No Comments

The past few weeks have been extremely volatile for the crypto market, but that isn’t stopping some of the biggest players from moving forward. Coinbase is the second largest crypto exchange by volume, and FTX, the third largest crypto exchange, was just dethroned. We’ll deep dive into Coinbase CEO and co-founder, Brian Armstrong’s thoughts on the FTX collapse, regulation and stability of the crypto industry, and a whole lot more when he joins us virtually onstage at ZebethMedia Sessions: Crypto on Thursday, November 17. This year, Coinbase also launched initiatives like its NFT marketplace in hopes of attracting new audiences and politician scorecards to educate American customers about members of Congress’ crypto friendliness. In 2021, Coinbase went public on Nasdaq and hit all-time highs around $353 per share, but has since fallen 86% to about $56 per share, according to current price data. Armstrong is a former Airbnb software engineer and co-founded Coinbase 10 years ago in San Francisco with former currency trader Fred Ehrsam, who left the company in 2017. TC Sessions: Crypto takes place on November 17 in Miami. This is one of the most pivotal points in crypto history — don’t miss your chance to hear the current analysis and learn what you need to do to keep your crypto business on track. Buy your pass today to be in the room and in the know. Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Crypto? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Uber, Lyft to pay NYC drivers more by end of year • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in TransportationNo Comments

Uber and Lyft will have to increase the minimum pay rates for drivers in New York City by the end of the year, Engadget reports. The fare increase comes amid a driver shortage post-pandemic, in large part due to rising operational costs. The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) voted to increase the per-minute rates of ride-hail drivers by 7.42% and per-mile rates by 23.93%. Yellow and green cab rates will also increase by 23% by the end of this year. The commission is hoping that increasing the pay rates will attract more taxis and drivers to the roads in order to serve increasing passenger demand. “Raising taxi fare rates and minimum pay for high-volume drivers is the right thing to do for our city,” said TLC commissioner David Do in a statement. “This is the first taxi fare increase in ten years, and these raises will help offset increased operating expenses and the cost of living for TLC-licensed drivers.” Per the new rates, a sample trip of 30 minutes that goes 7.5 miles will require a minimum driver pay of $27.15, which is up $4 from original rates and more than $2.50 from the current rates, according to the TLC. The commission noted that this is still a minimum and companies can pay drivers higher than that amount. Companies will continue to choose how much to charge passengers. It’s not yet clear how this will affect Uber and Lyft customers, and neither company has yet explained if they will offload costs onto passengers. In terms of metered rides, the new drop rate will be $3.00, up from $2.50. Unit rates will go from $0.50 to $0.70. This translates to an increase in passenger fare of about 22.9%, according to the TLC. So a $15.97 ride will now cost $19.62. In February, Uber and Lyft drivers got a 5.3% increase in minimum driver pay rate due to inflation and higher operational costs. Today’s fare hike is on top of that. Ride-hail drivers can also expect to receive an additional rate increase in March, which will be based on inflation comparing December 2022 to September 2022. Last month, Uber urged the city to vote against the proposed fare increase, saying it was “economically unjustifiable” because it meant the agency would be locking in this summer’s high gas prices in perpetuity, only allowing expenses to go up moving forward. “While moving away from dynamic pay rates was long overdo, passing a rule that expressly says it wont be guided by economic reality going forward hurts riders, drivers and the agency’s credibility,” said Freddi Goldstein, an Uber spokesperson. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) applauded the fare raise, saying it would provide momentum to get driver income to $25 per hour after expenses. “This raise is very important for us. After the $2300 a month I pay in rent, the expensive cost of gas and food, what do I have left at the end of the day?” said Mamadou L Diallo, NYTWA member and Uber and Lyft driver, in a statement. “Our families, parents, children depend on us but it is not enough. We make New York a 24 hour city. We deserve this raise!”

NASA taps SpaceX for second crewed Starship demonstration mission to the moon • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in SpaceNo Comments

NASA tapped SpaceX to provide a second crewed demonstration landing on the Moon as part of its Artemis lunar exploration program, a huge win for SpaceX and a possible gesture at the relative lack of existing competition for such services. The award is a modification to an existing Human Landing System (HLS) contract between the two entities, which established the agreement for the first lunar demonstration landing. That landing, which will use the Starship human landing system, will be the main goal of the Artemis III mission. (Artemis I, the uncrewed demonstration mission, could happen as early as tomorrow morning.) This second landing mission is for the following launch, Artemis IV, which is currently on the books for 2027. SpaceX’s big win of the original HLS generated a huge amount of controversy and backlash when it was awarded back in April 2021. The controversy was due mainly to the fact that NASA selected a single vendor (SpaceX) for the award. Histrically, for these kinds of big budget, ambitious contracts, NASA would select two vendors – to foster competition and as a kind of hedge, in case one of them failed. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin took particular umbrage to the decision, going so far as to file a protest with the Government Accountability Office over the decision and taking NASA to federal court. The company’s protests, however, were summarily quashed. This modification, also known as Option B, will help SpaceX demonstrate a Starship lunar lander for the long-term. “Continuing our collaborative efforts with SpaceX through Option B furthers our resilient plans for regular crewed transportation to the lunar surface and establishing a long-term human presence under Artemis,” Human Landing System program manager Lisa Watson-Morgan said in a statement. “This critical work will help us focus on the development of sustainable, service-based lunar landers anchored to NASA’s requirements for regularly recurring missions to the lunar surface.” The original contract was awarded for $2.9 billion; NASA did not specify the additional amount it would pay for the second mission. Developing…

Third time’s a charm? NASA will attempt to launch its mega moon rocket early tomorrow morning • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in SpaceNo Comments

NASA is set to launch the Artemis I mission on November 16, with agency officials saying they were prepared to accept the risks from minor damage the launch system incurred from Hurricane Nicole last week. Tomorrow’s attempt, which has a two-hour launch window opening at 1:04 a.m. EST, could kick-start NASA’s ambitious Artemis lunar exploration program. It’s under that program that NASA is hoping to send the first woman and person of color to the moon before the end of the decade. NASA’s hyping the launch with the hashtag #wearegoing and one certainly hopes, after technical snafus, two separate hurricane landfalls, cost overruns and a nearly two-decades-long development timeline that this is the case tomorrow. This mission, dubbed Artemis I, is chiefly a test of the Orion spacecraft rather than the 32-story-tall Space Launch System (which is expendable — there is no “testing” it, per se). Orion, which is uncrewed for this launch, will take a 25-day journey around the moon before returning to Earth and splashing down in the ocean. NASA wants to understand how its heat shield fares during the grueling atmospheric reentry process and get valuable data on its flight through lunar orbit. Both the rocket and the spacecraft incurred minor damage after the most recent brush with a hurricane last week. As NASA manager explained in a media briefing on November 14, technicians had to change out a component of an electrical connector and also examined the potential risks related to some material that had stripped away from the Orion spacecraft. Overall, they said the mission management team felt the risks were at an acceptable level. “We want to take as much risk out of the system as we can, but there is risk in there and we need to be prepared for that,” Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, said in a prelaunch briefing on Monday. NASA has attempted to launch the vehicle on two separate occasions. The first, in August, was scrubbed due to a hydrogen bleed line issue with one of the rocket’s four core stage engines; the second attempt a few days later also called off for the same reason. Should this third launch attempt not take place for whatever reason, the agency will have more opportunities on November 19 and 25. The stakes for a launch in general are very high, but the stakes for this launch in particular are not very high — which is to say, it’s very, very important to launch the SLS and it’s important it’s successful, but whether that happens tonight, or November 19, is not of huge importance. In some ways, the significance of NASA’s SLS cannot be overstated: A successful mission would vindicate the billions of dollars spent developing and building this rocket, for one thing. It would also give real energy to the agency’s Artemis program and finally, finally mark the beginning of humanity’s return to the moon. But whether that happens tomorrow, or November 19, or an even later date, is relatively immaterial to the success of the program overall. As Free said during a separate media briefing last week, “We’re never going to get to Artemis II if Artemis I isn’t successful.” You can watch the launch live by clicking the video at the top of this link. The agency will begin coverage of the mission at 10:30 PM EST.

Boston Dynamics sues Ghost Robotics over robot dog patent infringements • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in boston dynamics, ghost robotics, Government & Policy, Hardware, military, patent litigation, Robotics & AINo Comments

If you know anything about Ghost Robotics, it’s likely one of two things: 1) They make robot dogs. 2) Sniper rifles can be mounted to those robots. A majority of the Philadelphia firm’s press coverage has revolved around these facts, along with some coverage of its systems being used to patrol the U.S. border. That last bit was enough to grab the attention of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted: It’s shameful how both parties fight tooth + nail to defend their ability to pump endless public money into militarization. From tanks in police depts to corrupt military contracts, funding this violence is bipartisan + non-controversial, yet healthcare + housing isn’t. It’s BS. Ghost has thus far not demonstrated any manner of ethical qualms when it comes to its work with military and law enforcement — but it’s the company’s product design that could ultimately get it in hot water. Boston Dynamics filed a suit in the Delaware court system on November 11, alleging Ghost of infringing on multiple patents. “Boston Dynamics’ early success with the Spot robot did not go unnoticed by competitors in the robotics industry, including Ghost Robotics,” the suit notes. It goes on to call out two specific models, Vision 60 and Spirit 40, both “dog”-style quadrupeds. While Boston Dynamics tells ZebethMedia it doesn’t comment on pending legislation (understandable), it adds: Innovation is the lifeblood of Boston Dynamics, and our roboticists have successfully filed approximately 500 patents and patent applications worldwide. We welcome competition in the emerging mobile robotics market, but we expect all companies to respect intellectual property rights, and we will take action when those rights are violated. The suit notes that Boston Dynamics sent Ghost a letter on July 20, asking the company to review its patents. This was followed by multiple cease and desist letters. The filing then goes on to offer a fairly comprehensive catalog of alleged infringements. While Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot has been deployed by law enforcement agencies like the NYPD, the company has been vocal in its opposition to weaponizing robots. Last month, it joined Agility, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics and Open Robotics in penning an open letter condemning the practice. It noted, in part: We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously operated, widely available to the public, and capable of navigating to previously inaccessible locations where people live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues. Weaponized applications of these newly-capable robots will also harm public trust in the technology in ways that damage the tremendous benefits they will bring to society. Contracts with agencies have — of course — played a major role in the growth of robotics firms, including Boston Dynamics, which relied on DARPA as a major source of funding in its early days (though deals were sunset when the company was acquired by Google). Any firm willing to build the machinery for autonomous warfare stands to make a lot of money, assuming they’re not sidelined by ethical misgivings. Ghost gained prominence late last year when images emerged from a trade show featuring one of its robots with a SWORD Defense Systems Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle (SPUR) mounted to its back. The firm’s then-CEO Jiren Parikh told me at the time: We don’t make the payloads. Are we going to promote and advertise any of these weapon systems? Probably not. That’s a tough one to answer. Because we’re selling to the military, we don’t know what they do with them. We’re not going to dictate to our government customers how they use the robots. We do draw the line on where they’re sold. We only sell to U.S. and allied governments. We don’t even sell our robots to enterprise customers in adversarial markets. We get lots of inquiries about our robots in Russia and China. We don’t ship there, even for our enterprise customers. The suit asks the court to award unspecified damages for the alleged infringements. We’ve reached out to Ghost Robotics about Boston Dynamics’ filing and will update the story accordingly as we hear back.

Bling Capital, avoiding crypto bets, pulls in capital across two new funds • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in VentureNo Comments

Ben Ling, a prolific angel investor turned venture capitalist, has never put a lot of stock in the need for a new, decentralized internet. It’s why the firm he founded almost exactly four years ago— naming it Bling Capital (a nickname from way back) — doesn’t have the kind of bets that are right now becoming a black eye for a lot of other venture outfits. It might also be why Ling, whose longtime friend and co-investor Kyle Lui joined Bling Capital eight months ago from the cross-border firm DCM — seemingly had little trouble closing on $212 million across two new venture funds: a $109 million seed-stage vehicle, and a $103 million opportunity-type fund that the two will predominantly use to invest in their breakout portfolio companies. Investing in companies like Rippling, a six-year-old software platform now valued at $11.25 billion, and Airtable, the cloud-collaboration service that’s also valued at around $11 billion, didn’t hurt, either, of course. We talked with the pair yesterday to learn more about their mission to back startups focused on fintech, digital health, B2B SaaS and, on rarer occasion, the consumer internet. Our chat, below, has been edited for length and clarity. TC: Ben, Kyle is based in San Francisco, but you moved to Miami a couple of years ago. Are you seeing the effects of FTX’s implosion? Has the mood shifted there? [Editor’s note: FTX last year won the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena, though the team cut ties with FTX last week. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, based in the Bahamas, also spoke routinely at Miami-based crypto events.] BL: I’m not qualified to answer that question, because I was out [of town] last week. But what’s actually interesting is that during my time in Miami and meeting a lot of entrepreneurs and investors, FTX actually never came up. For me, the circles that I ran in with, probably one out of 10 was a focused crypto investor and the other nine were traditional VCs or entrepreneurs. Our firm has not invested in crypto, it’s not a focus area for us, so that’s also why we don’t spend a ton of time with a lot of the crypto funds and VCs. TC: Why did you decide to avoid crypto? BL: We’ve never been focused on crypto since the start of Bling capital. Even when I was at Khosla Ventures [where Ling logged close to six years before hanging his own shingle], we avoided crypto. Generally, my feeling is that all the currencies will have value if people agree that there’s value. Just like art, just like gold, when people agree on something as a store of value, it becomes [valuable] because there’s a common belief system. For a lot of the applications, we struggled to really understand why they were truly better than the existing incumbents and why they would actually take over. Why were they going to be 10x better, 10x faster, 10x cheaper? We just had standard questions around adoption. We also never really focused on it, so we felt that others were more experienced in the space and much more advanced and that we did not have a comparative advantage. TC: You don’t believe that blockchains could improve current-day SaaS offerings? BL: B2B SaaS is an incredible area of focus. There’s a lot of verticalized software that I think will make major inroads because there’s a lot of the standard Salesforce-type SaaS and there’s consumer-type SaaS that has risen, and now the SaaS marketplace movement is really making its way into B2B, as well. And I think that most, if not all, of these problems can be solved by the traditional Web 2 technologies. We question whether you need web3 technologies to succeed in B2B SaaS. Our investing philosophy is that we either have to have a network advantage or an expertise advantage over the other investors in order to invest in something. Otherwise we’re not qualified to [make a particular bet]. TC: When you talk about network advantage, are your LP base? I know that Bling Capital’s two earlier funds had something like 100 limited partners. You also, relatedly, have what you call a product council. Are these people one and the same? KL: Yeah, I mean, [our] product council members are folks who tend to be heads of product, heads of engineering, heads that go-to-market at various top technology companies and it’s important for us to continue to add them because they are not only our largest source of deal flow, but are also very active in advising our startups. TC: And they are also LPs? They have a stake in your funds to incentivize them to help your portfolio companies? BL: All product council members are LPs in the fund, so when the fund is invested in a company, all of them are invested in the company as well. But 80% of the fund is now institutional investors. TC: Obviously the market has slowed down, even for early-stage startups. What are you seeing in terms of how long it now takes to do a deal? KL: I would say on the new deal front, on the pre seed and seed side, we’re seeing timelines that were one to two weeks now [extending into] more like two to four weeks, which is really healthy because it allows for more proper diligence. We are able to do deals in a matter of days if we have strong conviction, but we do like that the market is a bit more sane. Another dynamic that we’re seeing is that entrepreneurs are starting to really wake up to this new world, and that wasn’t the case even six months ago. Back then, we saw growth deals really kind of halt, but that didn’t really impact the way that first-time founders in particular thought about their valuations. Now we’re seeing them come around as well. So [collectively] we’re actually seeing a lot of really interesting deals. TC: In terms of returns,

Ring launches pilot program to let local agencies share updates and ‘safety information’ • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Amazon, Apps, government, neighbors, pilot, Ring, Safety, Security, StartupsNo Comments

Ring today announced that local government agencies will be able to have an official presence on the company’s Neighbors app. Beginning with the City of North Port and Pinellas County Government in Florida and the City of Fulton in New York, the new program will allow government organizations to provide safety information through Neighbors, the Amazon-owned company’s neighborhood watch feature that alerts users to nearby alleged crimes and events. “Local government agencies, such as county and municipality governments and their departments, play an important role in public safety,” Ring wrote in a blog post published this afternoon. “This pilot program will enable users in select municipalities to receive more safety information, updates and tips from a broader group of local agencies, all in one place.” Participating local government agencies will have public profiles in Neighbors that users can visit to see their activity and posts. Ring notes that the program won’t enable the agencies to make a “Request for Assistance” on Neighbors, a capability that lets law enforcement ask the public for help with an active investigation. For the time being, that’ll remain reserved to the police departments that’ve partnered with Ring. The new Ring program, while helpful on its face, is unlikely win over consumer advocates who’ve argued the company’s devices are a security threat. As ZebethMedia previously reported, Ring has a history of sharing footage with the government without users’ permission. Between January and July of this year alone, Amazon shared Ring doorbell footage with U.S. authorities 11 times without informing the device owners. Ring has been criticized for working closely with thousands of police departments around the U.S., allowing police to request video doorbell camera footage from homeowners through Neighbors. Ring only began disclosing its connections with law enforcement after the U.S. government sent demands for transparency from the company.

Unit’s banking-as-a-service platform is getting into the charge card game • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in banking-as-a-service, Brex, Fintech, Itai Damti, Startups, unitNo Comments

If the banking-as-a-service fintech Unit does its job right, it will be ubiquitous among businesses and simultaneously have a name unknown to the end user. The company gives companies a way to embed financial services into their product — and after already launching debit cards, Unit is officially breaking into the charge card game. Unit customers can now use the startup’s API to build custom-designed charge cards for their own end users. Customers can offer their customers a charge card, credit card, revolving loan or any other credit products that Unit’s bank partners offer. On the back end, Unit will handle card printing, compliance and, once the card is in use, transaction tracking as well. According to co-founder and CEO Itai Damti, cards are Unit’s fourth and final pillar as a venture-backed company, adding onto its products in the debit, bank accounts and payments space. Just six months ago, Unit announced that it raised a $100 million Series C at a $1.2 billion valuation, making its total equity raised since inception to nearly $170 million. Charge cards, which are more popular than credit cards for small businesses, give Unit a way to enable customers to build and offer lending products, even though the startup is not a lender itself. “Once you can store money for people, you can move money for people and you can give people money, this is the full spectrum of banking that all these software products can use to launch within their environments,” Damti said. Image Credits: Unit If Unit’s new card line sounds competitive with the likes of Brex and Ramp, valued at billions of dollars — I had the same thought, and it’s a little more complicated. Instead of selling a card to startups like its well-capitalized competitors, Unit is selling customers on a way to create personalized cards for their own end users. It’s going for a classic B2BC model instead of a B2B model. “If you’re a company that sells to construction companies, instead of your customers finding other solutions in the market, you can just embed [lending] into your software,” Damti said. “We don’t compete with [Brex and Ramp] per se, but we do allow companies to basically offer an equivalent product and do it in a way that is embedded.” Unit’s expansion sits differently during a particularly tough economic run for fintech companies such as Chime and Stripe, which conducted layoffs over the past few weeks. Unit VP of lending David Sinsky, who recently joined the company after a seven-year stint at Opendoor, explained that the new product could help its customers introduce an entire new line of revenue through interchange fees. “There’s maybe less VC money to spend on Google and Facebook ads, but we’re working with companies that have built differentiated software,” Sinsky said. “And I see Unit [as an] opportunity to better serve those users and improve their unit economics.” Unit claims that a card swipe transaction will yield 0.5% more interchange revenue when done with a credit card compared to a debit card. Damti added that there’s “less of a red ocean in vertical finance … there’s a tremendous opportunity, because they have data, they have a distribution and they can be very effective underwriters who are very effective lenders in their vertical.”

October funding plateaus with valuations likely to blame

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in EC News Analysis, EC venture capital, funding, fundraising, Startups, VentureNo Comments

After a particularly slow summer, the mood in venture capital seemed to change with the season come Labor Day. By the end of September, it felt that maybe the worst had already come in terms of this year’s falling venture funding numbers. Investment volume had stopped declining and was starting to make up ground. Investors said that anecdotally it felt like the market was really starting to gain momentum again — especially at the early stages. But October funding data showed that the venture capital market still has a long way to go.

YouTube Shorts can now include 60 seconds of music or sounds, up from 15 seconds before • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Apps, Creators, Media & Entertainment, Music, shorts, Videos, YouTubeNo Comments

YouTube today is addressing one of creators’ chief complaints with filming videos for its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts: to date, the music and sounds added to videos could only be 15 seconds in length, even though Shorts themselves can be as long as 60 seconds. Now, thanks to revised licensing deals, YouTube says the majority of music on Shorts will be available in durations of up to 60 seconds. In addition, creators can “remix,” or sample, up to 60 seconds of sounds from other videos, instead of only 15 seconds, as before. Over the next few weeks, YouTube creators will begin to see the expanded options for adding music to their videos when using the audio picker in the YouTube app for iOS and Android. In some cases, the songs will only be 30 seconds in length, due to continued licensing restrictions, YouTube notes. The company, like TikTok and others, negotiates with songs’ rights holders, including the music label or distributor and publisher, before including the track in YouTube Shorts. While YouTube won’t comment on the state of its deals with its music industry partners, it says that most songs in its audio library will now have a maximum duration of up to 60 seconds. The update aims to make YouTube Shorts more competitive with its rivals, including TikTok and Instagram Reels, at a time when the length of what’s considered a “short-form” video is also changing. To access the longer music tracks, creators will need to tap the “+” icon to enter the Shorts camera in the mobile app then pick an audio track from the library. When choosing the sound in the audio picker, you’ll be able to see the duration time which indicates how much audio you can use from the specific track. Creators will also need to change their video recording duration in the Shorts camera in order to use more than 15 seconds of audio, YouTube notes. Similarly, the company is also expanding the length of audio that can be clipped and re-used from other videos. In April, YouTube announced the launch of a remix feature that allows Shorts creators to sample clips from existing YouTube videos that have been posted publicly on the platform — unless the video’s owner had opted out. Many creators see this functionality as a way to bring more visitors to their channel or to introduce their content to a younger generation of users who may have only discovered their videos through Shorts. Before, creators could only sample 15-second segments of original audio from eligible Shorts and video-on-demand content. Now, they can sample up to 60 seconds. While the length of music is being expanded, the maximum length of a YouTube Shorts video itself is not — it will remain 60 seconds. The new feature will roll out to YouTube users globally on iOS and Android. Currently, YouTube Shorts are being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month and garner over 30 billion views per day, the company claims. Unrelated to music expansions, YouTube also today confirmed the launch of Shopping on YouTube Shorts — a new feature being piloted with U.S. creators that lets them tag products from their own stores. The move follows the launch of TikTok’s own of e-commerce features. Currently, viewers in the U.S., India, Brazil, Canada, and Australia can view and interact with these tags for the time being, and the feature will expand to more creators next year.