Author : zebethcontrol

Telehealth unicorn Cerebral lays off 20% of staff for ‘operational efficiencies’ • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, Cerebral, Layoffs, mental health, StartupsNo Comments

Cerebral is laying off 20% of its staff, citing an ongoing push for efficiency at the digital health unicorn. A spokesperson for Cerebral confirmed the layoffs to ZebethMedia but did not share the specific number of employees affected. According to the WSJ, which first reported the news, and Insider, some 400 people will lose their jobs, primarily clinical staff and care counselors. “Today’s changes are part of Cerebral’s ongoing transformation program, which drives to create more sustainable growth and stability, while further delivering our mission to democratize access to high-quality mental health care for all,” a Cerebal spokesperson told ZebethMedia. “These changes are focused specifically on realizing operational efficiencies while prioritizing clinical quality and safety across the organization.” The company did not explain what type of severance, if any, was offered to employees, but did tell ZebethMedia “we are doing everything we can to support our impacted colleagues as they pursue other opportunities.” Cerebral’s model explains care counselors meet with patients regularly to manage medications prescribed by clinicians and provide support. The SoftBank-backed company has come under scrutiny for making it easier to provide ADHD medication to potential clients. Perhaps too easy: allegations led to an investigation by the Department of Justice, into potential violations of the Controlled Substances Act for overprescribing prescriptions such as Adderall. A lawsuit was also filed against the company by Matthew Truebe, former vice president of product and engineering, alleging company higher-ups encouraged Cerebral employees to prescribe stimulants to all ADHD patients. According to a press release, the company has since stopped providing those services, citing the need to review its clinical quality and safety processes. “Based on recent feedback from stakeholders, it is clear that this has become a distraction from our focus to democratize access to mental health care services, provide treatment for more patients and add service lines for new conditions,” Robertson said in the release. The San Francisco-based company has raised over $426 million since its founding in 2020, $300 million of which was announced in a Series C last December. Cerebral is valued at $4.8 billion, according to Behavioral Health Business. Earlier this year Cerebral laid off “hundreds” of people primarily affecting its support and operations team to better its programs. At the time, the company did not provide any details to ZebethMedia explaining any severance offered to employees. Cerebral is just one of many healthcare startups making cuts in the past few months, such as Truepill and Noom. Current and former Cerebral employees can contact Andrew Mendez by e-mail at andrew.mendez@techcrunch.com or on Signal, a secure encrypted messaging app, at 669-832-6800.

A closer look at macOS Ventura • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Apple, Apps, macos, macos 13, venturaNo Comments

Sometimes it’s nice when a product launch falls when I’m on the road. I qualify that statement because, well, it’s one more thing to shoehorn into an invariably overloaded work trip. But there are some products that are just better tested on the road: laptops, earbuds, travel chargers and the occasional operating system. I’ve been running a beta of macOS 13 Ventura on my desktop since it was introduced back at WWDC over the summer. As ever, such things are not for the faint of heart. As I’ve noted before, I’ve really come to appreciate Stage Manager on the big screen. My adoption ratio for new macOS workflow features isn’t great — I usually use a majority of them for the duration of the review period and then immediately forget they exist. Stage Manager has been through the ringer on the iPadOS side — and rightfully so. The beta implementations left a lot to be desired, contributing to the company’s decision to forgo iPadOS 16, in favor of skipping to 16.1 around a month or so later. I won’t say Stage Manager was perfect from the get-go on the desktop (what beta software really is?), but I enabled it on day one and have rarely found myself shutting it off, ever since. Image Credits: Brian Heater When enabled, the feature keeps all windows open concurrently on the desktop. The primary window occupies the majority of the space, and the others are minimized on the side of the screen. It’s a bit like a toolbar comprised of open apps. Tapping any of these will swap them into the main staging area. You can also pull out a few and create a stack that will then be minimized and expanded together. An underrated piece in all of this is the fact that all of the clutter on the desktop goes away when the feature is enabled. If you maximize the window, meanwhile, the sidebar will get out of the way. The feature still has some quirks I’d suggest Apple update. Unzipping a window, for instance, drops the Finder window you’er using back into the side bar. Pulling individual windows out of a stack can also be a bit annoying. Overall, however, you can make a strong case for Stage Manager as the best Mac productivity update in years. Happy to say here that I’ve been using it on the desktop and notebook alike. Continuity Camera was greeted with mixed reception when it was introduced at this year’s WWDC. The critique is fair in the sense that it feels like putting a Band-Aid on a bigger issue, addressing the symptoms, rather than the root cause. The broader issue is that Apple has been neglecting laptop webcams for years. It’s an issue that was brought into sharp relief during the pandemic, for obvious reasons, and Apple has, more recently, been making the effort to improve video capture, through a combination of tweaks to the ISP and improved hardware. Image Credits: Brian Heater Continuity Camera was developed as a way of addressing the bigger issue with existing hardware. Instead of being forced to buy an external webcam or new Mac, it offers a way to leverage the iPhone as a kind of makeshift webcam. And let’s be real, the iPhone’s video capture is lightyears ahead of even the most recent Macs. Setup is simple, as long as the Mac and iPhone are running the same Apple account. Using a accessory like the one recently released by Belkin, you can mount it to the top of the laptop or desktop, right above the built-in webcam. The rear-facing cameras will do the webcam’s work. As far as solutions go, this isn’t among Apple’s most elegant, and as I noted in my Belkin write-up, the iPhone 14 Pro is too heavy for the Air’s lid to support at anything but a 90-degree angle. But the solution absolutely works in a pinch. I plan to keep the Belkin attachment in my cable bag, going forward. Those are the two headline features in my estimation. Though, as ever, these sorts of releases are pretty major feature dumps, with updates across the board. Spotlight gets a lot of love, this time out. It’s one of those features you likely don’t think much about. I tend to limit my desktop searches to local files, and for everything else, I use Google. Apple’s pushing to make the desktop version of Spotlight the kind of one-stop shop it has become on the iPhone. That certainly makes sense on a mobile device, but in the end, I’m not sure how much more convenient the macOS version is versus firing up a browser and searching Google. This time out, the feature offers a more streamlined design, along with searches within Photos, Messages and Notes — those, at least, are (hopefully) not things you’ll find in a browser-based search. The list also includes entertainment searches for things like music and films. However, I’d say the handiest addition here are “quick actions,” which offer shortcuts for things like creating alarms and Shazaming music. That should save you a bit of precious time. Safari tends to get a lot of love in these big system updates, and that certainly follows for Ventura. This is another place where I have to be upfront about not being a daily user. I’m just too wedded to Chrome as a browser and cloud-based account syncing service. The biggest news here is Shared Tab Groups, which lets you, well, share groups of tabs. Effectively, you make a group on a specific theme and can share them through a variety of methods, including Messages and Mail. There’s a nice security overhaul on board, as well, with the addition of end-to-end encrypted sign in through Passkeys. Think of what Google offers with Password Manager. The company has also expanded the feature to extend to non-Apple devices. Image Credits: Brian Heater There are some truly welcome additions to Messages this time out. Now you can unsend

Microsoft’s Windows Dev Kit 2023 lets developers tap AI processors on laptops • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in AI, Apps, Hardware, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Robotics & AI, WindowsNo Comments

At its Build conference in May, Microsoft debuted Project Volterra, a device powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform designed to let developers explore “AI scenarios” via Qualcomm’s Neural Processing SDK for Windows toolkit. Today, Volterra — now called Windows Dev Kit 2023 — officially goes on sale, priced at $599 and available from the Microsoft Store in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. Here’s how Microsoft describes it: With Windows Dev Kit 2023, developers will be able to bring their entire app development process onto one compact device, giving them everything they need to build Windows apps for Arm, on Arm. As previously announced, the Windows Dev Kit 2023 contains a dedicated AI processor, called the Hexagon processor, complimented by an Arm-based chip — the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 — both supplied by Qualcomm. It enables developers to build Arm-native and AI-powered apps alongside and with tools such as Visual Studio (version 17.4 runs natively on Arm), .NET 7 (which has Arm-specific performance improvements), VSCode, Microsoft Office and Teams and machine learning frameworks including PyTorch and TensorFlow. Microsoft’s Windows Dev Kit 2023, which packs an Arm processor plus an AI accelerator chip. Image Credits: Microsoft Here’s the full list of specs: 32GB LPDDR4x RAM 512GB fast NVMe Storage Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 compute platform RJ45 for ethernet 3 x USB-A ports 2 x USB-C ports Mini DisplayPort (which supports up to three external monitors, including two at 4K 60Hz) Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 6 The Windows Dev Kit 2023 arrives alongside support in Windows for neural processing units (NPU), or dedicated chips tailored for AI- and machine learning-specific workloads. Dedicated AI chips, which speed up AI processing while reducing the impact on battery, have become common in mobile devices like smartphones. But as apps such as AI-powered image upscalers and image generators come into wider use, manufacturers have been adding such chips to their laptops (see Microsoft’s own Surface Pro X and 5G Surface Pro 9). The Windows Dev Kit 2023 taps into the recently released Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK for Windows, which provides tools for converting and executing AI models on Snapdragon-based Windows devices in addition to APIs for targeting distinct processor cores with different power and performance profiles. Using it and the Neural Processing SDK, developers can execute, debug and analyze the performance of deep neural networks on Windows devices with Snapdragon hardware as well as integrate the networks into apps and other code. The tooling benefits laptops built on the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 system-on-chip, like the Acer Spin 7 and Lenovo ThinkPad X13s. Engineered to compete against Apple’s Arm-based silicon, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3’s AI accelerator can be used to apply AI processing to photos and video. Microsoft and Qualcomm are betting the use cases expand with the launch of the Windows Dev Kit 2023; Microsoft for its part has started to leverage AI accelerators in Windows 11 to power features like background noise removal. Image Credits: Microsoft In a blog post shared with ZebethMedia ahead of today’s announcement, Microsoft notes that developers will “need to install the toolchain as needed for their workloads on Windows Dev Kit 2023” and that some tools and services “may require additional licenses, fees or both.” “More apps, tools, frameworks and packages are being ported to natively target Windows on Arm and will be arriving over the coming months,” the post continues. “In the meantime, thanks to Windows 11’s powerful emulation technology, developers will be able to run many unmodified x64 and x86 apps and tools on their Windows Dev Kit.” It remains to be seen whether the Windows Dev Kit reverses the fortune of Windows on Arm devices, which have largely failed to take off. Historically, they’ve been less powerful than Intel-based devices while suffering from compatibility issues and sky-high pricing (the Surface Pro X cost more than $1,500 at launch). Emulated app performance on the first few Arm-powered Windows devices tended to be poor and certain games wouldn’t launch unless they used a particular graphics library, while drivers for hardware only worked if they were designed for Windows on Arm specifically. The Windows on Arm situation has improved as of late, thanks to more powerful hardware (like the Snapdragon 8cx Gen3) and Microsoft’s App Assurance program to ensure that business and enterprise apps work on Arm. But the ecosystem has a long way to go, still, with Unity — one of the most popular game engines today — only this morning announcing a commitment to allow developers to target Windows on Arm devices to get native performance.

ZebethMedia wants to hear Black founders’ stories of VC fundraising • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in black founders, diversity and inclusion, fundraising, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

On Friday, ZebethMedia reported the latest Crunchbase venture capital data, and the news isn’t very good from a diversity point of view: Black founders raised a paltry $187 million out of the $150.9 billion in venture capital allocated in Q3 this year. To put that into perspective, that’s only 0.12% of the total investment made in the quarter. The story launched a conversation on Twitter about the current state of venture funds for Black founders. It unearthed pain and heartbreak, but it also brought to light the resilience of founders and investors who still have their hearts set on change. It also surfaced the reality that the powers that be — most, if not all, of the rich, white men, LPs and institutions with outsized power — are sticking to their old habits instead of doing much to truly bring about change in how venture capital is invested. One way to hold folks accountable is to keep openly talking about inequities. This is one reason why ZebethMedia has decided to create a forum for Black founders to — anonymously or not — submit their open, honest experiences of what it is like to fundraise for their startups today. We want to hear what investors still say to you behind closed doors. We want to know how often you’ve had to codeswitch, and what the anxiety levels are still like when walking into certain rooms. We want to know the good parts, like who are the allies, but also the bad parts, like who are the bullies. We acknowledge that this is not a new conversation, and there is much fatigue in constantly having the same conversations. But, it’s important to hold on, as there is much work to be done. The questions are below (click the form and scroll). Answer what you wish, as you wish; you can name names, or not. Please try to answer with a paragraph or 2-3 sentences and provide explicit examples where you can. We will publish many of the responses by the end of this year. Thank you for your help!

Marvel drops first trailer for ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Disney, marvel, Media & Entertainment, streaming serviceNo Comments

Marvel released the first trailer for “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” today, which gives fans a look at Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror and, for some reason, Bill Murray. The superhero movie will premiere in theaters on February 17, 2023. Disney told ZebethMedia that the film would likely stream on Disney+, but there’s no confirmed release date yet. The company has previously stated that films will get a 45-day theatrical window before they hit the streaming service. As an exception, Disney waited two months to release “Thor: Love and Thunder” since September 8 is Disney+ Day. We estimate that “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” will launch on the service around April 2023. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” kicks off Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and will explore Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Rudd), the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), Lang’s now older daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), along with the original Wasp, Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) getting sucked into the Quantum Realm. The trailer also shows Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror, the time-traveling supervillain who was seen in the Disney+ series “Loki” as an alternate version named ‘He Who Remains.’ Toward the end of the trailer, viewers will spot actor Bill Murray, a peculiar choice for inclusion in the trailer at this moment since multiple allegations of misconduct have been made against him. Murray’s role in the film is unknown.

PayPal rolls out support for passkeys on Apple devices • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Apple, Apps, iPad, iPhone, mac, PayPal, SecurityNo Comments

PayPal is making it easier to log in to its services — if you’re an Apple device user, that is. The payments giant today announced that it’s adding passkeys as a log in method for PayPal accounts, allowing iPhone, iPad and Mac users on PayPal.com to sign in without using a password. Passkeys are a relatively new industry standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium — in partnership with Apple, Google and Microsoft — that are designed to replace passwords with bits of data called cryptographic key pairs. (To make matters somewhat confusing, Apple announced its own version of the passkey standard called Passkey in June.) The pairs consist of a public key stored in the cloud and a private key stored locally on users’ devices, separated to ensure that a compromised server won’t give an attacker access to account credentials. Passkeys have the added benefit of supporting a range of authentication techniques including fingerprint scanning, face recognition, PIN codes and even swipe patterns. One downside is that, because passkeys reside on local devices, it can be harder to log into an app or service with them if you’re using someone else’s phone or laptop. But in this way, passkeys are undeniably more secure than your typical password. Image Credits: PayPal With PayPal, Apple device users running iOS 16, iPadOS 16.1 or macOS Ventura can create a passkey by logging into the PayPal website on desktop or mobile, typing their username and password and selecting the “Create a passkey” option. They’ll be prompted to authenticate with Apple Face ID or Touch ID to create the passkey, which will then be synced with Apple’s iCloud Keychain service. Users with devices that don’t support passkeys can still tap an iPhone to log in with a PayPal passkey, but they’ll have to scan a QR code that appears after they enter their username. PayPal passkeys begin rolling out today for users in the U.S. Passkeys will become available in additional countries starting early in 2023, PayPal says, and on platforms beyond iOS, iPadOS and macOS “as they add support for passkeys.”

US charges two alleged Chinese spies over plot to obstruct Huawei prosecution • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in China, Huawei, Security, us governmentNo Comments

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has unsealed charges against two alleged DPRC spies who are accused of attempting to obstruct a federal prosecution against Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. In a criminal complaint dated October 20 and made public on Monday, the U.S. claims that two Chinese intelligence officers, Guochun He (known as “Dong He”) and Zheng Wang (known as “Zen Wang”), attempted to bribe a U.S. law-enforcement official to obtain what they believed was inside information about the U.S. criminal case against a “global telecommunications company based in China.” The complaint doesn’t name the company, but the details match up with the known prosecution of the company. Huawei did not respond to a request for comment. The complaint alleges that He and Wang “attempted to direct a person they believed they recruited as an asset” inside a U.S. government law enforcement agency “to obtain confidential information regarding potential new charges to be brought against [Huawei] for the purpose of obstructing justice.” The government alleges He and Wang first cultivated their relationship with the law enforcement employee, who is not named, in February 2017, but that person “subsequently began working as a double agent for the U.S. government.” The men are accused of attempting to extract confidential information about witnesses and trial evidence in the Huawei case and paid the double agent, referred to as “GE-1”, $61,000 in bitcoin, cash and jewelery for what they believed was insider information about the Justice Department’s pending prosecution of the China-based company. At one point in October 2021, the indictment alleges, the undercover agent passed a single-page document to one of the Chinese intelligence officers, classified as “SECRET”, that detailed U.S. plans to arrest two principals from Huawei living in China. They paid the undercover agent $41,000 just for that single page. “Far more than an effort to collect information or intelligence, the actions of the PRC intelligence officers charged in this case must be called out for what they are: an extraordinary intervention by agents of a foreign government to interfere with the integrity of the U.S. criminal justice system, compromise a U.S. government employee and obstruct the enforcement of U.S. law to benefit a PRC-based commercial enterprise,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen. “The Department of Justice will not abide nation-state actors meddling in U.S. criminal process and investigations, and will not tolerate foreign interference with the fair administration of justice.” If convicted, He and Wang face up to 60 years and 20 years in prison, respectively. The case was one of three unsealed on Monday relating to alleged Chinese interference in the U.S. justice system. One in New Jersey charges three Chinese intelligence agents with conspiring to act in the U.S. as illegal agents on behalf of a foreign government, while another in the Eastern District of New York accuses several people working on behalf of the Chinese government of “engaging in a multi-year campaign of threats and harassment to force a U.S. resident to return to China,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday.

Apple increases US subscription prices for Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple One bundle • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Apple, apple music, apple one, apple tv, Apps, Media & Entertainment, streaming serviceNo Comments

Today marks another blow to subscribers and their wallets. Apple increased the subscription prices for Apple TV+, Apple Music and the Apple One bundle in the U.S. — joining various other companies that have raised the prices of their subscription plans this year. Apple TV+ will increase by $2 monthly and $10 annually. Subscribers will be charged $6.99 per month or $69 per year. This will be the first time Apple TV+ has raised its subscription price since its launch, signifying a frustrating time for streaming subscribers who have seen price hikes left and right lately. Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and YouTube Premium’s family plan all experienced price increases this year. Apple Music is seeing a price hike of $1 for individual subscribers and $2 for families. The individual plan will now be $10.99 per month and the family plan will be $16.99 per month. In June, it was reported that Apple Music quietly increased the price of its student plan in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Apple One is a subscription plan that bundles up to six Apple services like Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud+, Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+. The new prices for the individual plan, family plan and Premier plan are $16.95/month, $22.95/month and $32.95/month, respectively. An Apple spokesperson provided a statement to ZebethMedia: The subscription prices for Apple Music, Apple TV+, and Apple One will increase beginning today. The change to Apple Music is due to an increase in licensing costs, and in turn, artists and songwriters will earn more for the streaming of their music. We also continue to add innovative features that make Apple Music the world’s best listening experience. We introduced Apple TV+ at a very low price because we started with just a few shows and movies. Three years later, Apple TV+ is home to an extensive selection of award-winning and broadly acclaimed series, feature films, documentaries, and kids and family entertainment from the world’s most creative storytellers. Apple recently raised the prices for in-app purchases on the App Store in many countries across Asia and Europe.

The seas are getting even rougher for Chinese startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in China, Chinese venture capital, EC East Asia, EC News Analysis, EC venture capital, startup fundraising, Startups, VentureNo Comments

The third quarter was far from favorable for Chinese startups looking to raise money. Data shows that for upstart tech companies in the country, Q3 2022 was the worst time to raise venture capital since Q1 2020, with far less capital invested than either the rest of 2020 and 2021, or for most of 2018 and 2019. China is hardly alone in seeing its domestic startup scene see slowing capital inflows, but recent news puts the country-specific information into new context: Given today’s Chinese tech share sell-off, there is fresh pressure on technology companies’ valuations in the country, and that could impact startup fundraising. If China saw fundraising decrease 10% in Q4 2022 from Q3 2022 — measured in dollar terms, not the number of funding events — we’d see startups facing the slowest quarter since the onset of 2018, according to CB Insights data. A steeper decline would put Q4 2022 as the nadir in the nation for the last five years. Why are Chinese tech stocks suffering today? After a period when the sale of the nation’s equities onshore was at least somewhat meddled with, the value of major and minor Chinese tech companies fell today in the wake of the Chinese Communist Party’s every-five-year confab. This time ’round, current Chinese Premier Xi Jinping secured not only another five years in power, he also solidified a cabinet of like-minded allies. The context is clear: The Xi method of managing China remains ascendant. And investors in tech companies, still licking wounds brought on by a regulatory barrage led by Xi — which included some reasonable ideas like dismantling certain anti-competitive practices along with some less enticing policies — are not enthused. The result? A bloodbath (American share price changes as of the time of publishing):

Apple iOS 16.1, iPad OS 16.1 and macOS Ventura are now available • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Gadgets, macos venturaNo Comments

Apple has released iOS 16.1, iPad OS 16.1 and macOS 13, as it announced it would do last week. The updates include a number of new features for iPhone, iPad and Mac devices, including the introduction of Continuity Camera, which allows iPhone owners to use their device as a webcam for their Macs. The iPad and Mac updates also introduce Stage Manager, the new (and somewhat controversial) windows management feature for multitasking. iOS 16.1 also introduces a new marquee feature for iPhones that support it: Live Activities. While a couple of Apple’s native apps have been able to take advantage of this feature, which provides live updating information on your Lock Screen, and in the Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro models. iCloud Shared Photo Library also comes to iPhone, iPad and Mac with these updates, meaning you can share libraries among multiple family members with contributions from all. Apple Fitness+ is also now relieved of its strict Apple Watch requirement, letting subscribers access workouts on their iPhones without having an Apple wearable of their own. All the updates should appear if you navigate to Settings > General > Software Update on iPhone or iPad, or to Preferences > Software Update on Mac.