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Arrival restructures (again), Bird shrinks and highlights from Disrupt • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Lyft, Rivian, The Station, TransportationNo Comments on Arrival restructures (again), Bird shrinks and highlights from Disrupt • ZebethMedia

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? Subscribe for free.  Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.  Wow, what a week over here at ZebethMedia! Our annual tech bonanza (I can’t even call it a conference) was a flurry of activity. Our expo floor was packed, the roundtables were oversubscribed and the two stages showcased some of the most interesting people in tech. The event culminated as it always does: naming the Startup Battlefield winner. That process started with the Startup Battlefield 200, handpicked companies (from thousands of applications) that were vetted and chosen to exhibit on the expo floor. From here, 20 startups were selected to compete in Startup Battlefield, where founders pitched before judges for a chance to win $100,000 and the coveted Battlefield Cup. We winnowed it down to five finalists: Advanced Ionics, AppMap, Intropic Materials, Minerva Lithium and Swap Robotics. The judges who reviewed the final five were Mar Hershenson (Pear VC), Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone, Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), ZebethMedia editor in chief Matthew Panzarino, David Tisch (BoxGroup) and Richard Wong (Accel). In the end, the crown went to Minerva Lithium, a company co-founded by Sheeba Dawood and Hemali Rathnayake that wants to change the way we extract lithium.  Minerva has come up with a coordinated polymer framework that extracts critical materials from salt water in just three days and without all the harmful effects on the environment. Minerva can not only extract lithium, which it can sell at battery-grade to battery makers, it can also capture other minerals and possibly purify the leftover water for drinking purposes.  Congrats to Minerva Lithium! Oh, before I forget: we’ve opened up pre-registration for 2-for-1 tickets so sign up and we’ll let you know when you can secure your seat at next year’s event. You can always email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. You also can send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec Rivian and Lyft at Disrupt RJ Scaringe, CEO at Rivian, and Kirsten Korosec from ZebethMedia at ZebethMedia Disrupt in San Francisco on October 19, 2022. Image Credit: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia During Disrupt, I interviewed Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe and Lyft co-founder and president Jon Zimmer. Both interviews provided some interesting insights on the challenges of founding and growing a company. There was even a little news in there. Here are some highlights from both. Lyft, Jon Zimmer On past challenges:• It wasn’t Covid, but the sustained and early fight with Uber that Zimmer believes was the hardest challenge that company has faced to date.On autonomous vehicles:“I think it’s too early to pick you know, one winner and so today, it’s about having multiple partners. Ten years from now? It’s too hard to predict.”On Tesla FSD and whether Lyft should tell drivers not to use while shuttling riders:“We do not have have a policy currently. You know, we think that the regulatory bodies are best, you know, when it comes to that level of safety.”On the Biden Administration proposal:“The recent Biden Administration proposal that you’re talking about basically just returns things to the way they were in the Obama administration where all our drivers were independent contractors. Typically, we are governed at a state level. Federal Government is important and matters for all industries, but it’s really interpreted at the state level, of which I would argue we’ve made significant progress over the last few years, California being one example.” Rivian, RJ Scaringe On the future product front:• More than half of Rivian’s 15,000 employees are working on future product pipeline, including the R2 platform, which will focus on smaller and cheaper vehicles• Yes, there will be 400-mile “Max Pack.” Scaringe didn’t provide a timeline.• Micromobility, specifically an e-bike will be part of the lineup On the recall:• A “significant majority” of the more than 12,000 vehicles that were recalled earlier this month.• “It was really powerful for us to respond so quickly, and I think what we saw from customers — of course, there’s frustration on anything like this — but that we were trying to do the best possible job we could. We were authentic about it. We didn’t we didn’t sugarcoat it. We said we’re gonna go fix this. And so it actually has been really quite positive.”On the supply chain:• Think the semiconductor chip shortage was bad? Scaringe said that shortage is “an appetizer to the degree of the sort of supply chain constraint we’re likely to see across the battery supply chain over the next 15 years.”  Woof. (that’s my reaction)• “The battery supply chain as we know it for lithium-ion batteries, whether you’re looking at lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate was built largely around consumer electronics and so it’s very small. It’s not a huge supply chain. And so it has to grow by 20x or on the order of 20x over the next 10 to 15 years. And so the level of investment needed to go build that is is staggering. And moreover, I think the level of risk concentration given that it hasn’t been built in the United States is a real thing.” Micromobbin’ The big micromobbin’ news this week fell squarely into the gloomy category. I’m talking about Bird and its plans to exit several markets across the world, including Germany, Sweden, Norway and “several dozen additional, primarily small to mid-sized markets” across the US, Europe and the Middle East. Deliveroo is partnering with Volt to trial the use of e-bikes for food delivery in the UK. You’re reading an abbreviated version of micromobbin’. Subscribe for free to the newsletter and you’ll get a lot more. Deal of the week ZebethMedia Disrupt kept me pretty busy, but a few

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Artiphon releases Orba 2, to make music-making even more accessible • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in artiphon, Gadgets, Music, orba 2, StartupsNo Comments on Artiphon releases Orba 2, to make music-making even more accessible • ZebethMedia

The original Orba was a curious little baseball-sized device that invited people who couldn’t play a triangle if they tried to somehow create beats, bops and bass lines. The success of the original — and the adoption of it as a tool for more serious musicians — inspired the Artiphon team to release an updated version. With the same form factor as the original, but a lot more smarts and the ability to record and upload your own sound samples or use sample packs, Orba 2 opens the door for a new generation of musicians, whether tone-deaf talentless hacks such as myself, or musicians who want to carry a versatile synth-like instrument in a small form factor. As much as I would love to subject you to my attempts at making music, here’s an actual musician — Taetro — showing off some of the fun:   “With Orba 2, being able to be out, capturing sounds with the app and nearly instantly turning it into an instrument is empowering because, no matter your relationship with music, being able to do fun sampling things like that is huge,” says Taetro in a blog post from Artiphon. “It can open up worlds for people, and people can interact with it in the same way they would by picking up a pen and doodling on a sketchpad.” From the original Orba, the most requested feature the company received was the ability to play instruments — guitars, acoustic drum sets, pianos, etc. The company says it rebuilt the Orba from the ground up to create the Orba 2, with a new sound engine, and adding more than 100 new sounds that are all based on real instruments. “We didn’t want to change too much about the industrial design of it; we knew that people love the form factor. The insides of the Orba 2 are completely different. Being able to play these samples and being able to make your own samples is new, and the ability to have longer songs –up to five minutes on the device itself — all of that is possible because of a new computer inside of it,” Adam McHeffey, chief marketing officer at Artiphon, said in an interview with ZebethMedia. “The new engine means it could play these audio-based samples. That’s the biggest thing that’s new, but in addition, we have added two gigabytes of sample memory, so that you could add your own samples to it as well. We also improved the converter and the speaker amps, and the headphone-out on it as well. We don’t make a big deal out of the tech specs with most of our marketing materials; we focus on what you can do with it.” I’ve had an Orba 2 on my desk for a few weeks, and I can attest it’s a very compelling play-thing: Picking it up between (and sometimes during) Zoom meetings and exploring a quick musical riff is pretty awesome. I noted that to McHeffey, who laughs in agreement. “It’s the perfect fidget toy,” he says. Writing off the Orba as a toy would be a mistake, however; it’s turning out to be a powerful learning tool as well. The company claims that two-thirds of its users had never played a musical instrument before. Orba 2 is on sale today, and costs $150.

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Docker launches a first preview of its WebAssembly tooling • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in developers, Docker, Enterprise, infrastructure, kubecon detroit 2022, WebAssemblyNo Comments on Docker launches a first preview of its WebAssembly tooling • ZebethMedia

Docker is still around and likely doing better – at last in financial terms — than during its early hype cycle that kicked off the container revolution (only to then be eclipsed by Kubernetes and its ecosystem). Today, the company announced the first technical preview of its WebAssembly (Wasm) support. Browser vendors pioneered Wasm to run web apps at native speeds, with code compiled from C, C++, Rust and other languages and run in a secure sandbox. Currently, you can compile about 40 languages to Wasm. But similar to how node.js brought JavaScript to the server, Wasm is now also migrating to the backend. Cloudflare supports it in its edge computing service, for example. We’re also starting to see some funding rounds in this space as VCs start waking up to the potential, with Cosmonic today announcing a $9 million funding round for its Wasm PaaS, for example. Fermyon announced a $20 million Series A round earlier this month. Docker clearly wants to be an early player in this space, too. The company notes that this is still very much a technical preview and that things will likely break. In this case, the Docker Engine uses the same containerd container runtime as the rest of the Docker ecosystem, but instead of using runc to run the container processes, it uses the wasmedge runtime. While Docker doesn’t go into details here, the promise of wasmedge is that it offers significantly faster startup times compared to Linux containers and that WasmEdge apps are significantly smaller (and run faster). Image Credits: Docker “We see Wasm as a complementary technology to Linux containers where developers can choose which technology they use (or both!) depending on the use case,” Docker’s Michael Irwin writes in today’s announcement. “And as the community explores what’s possible with Wasm, we want to help make Wasm applications easier to develop, build, and run using the experience and tools you know and love.” In addition to the product news, Docker also today announced that it will be joining the Bytecode Alliance, the non-profit behind WebAssembly and the WebAssembly System Interface that makes these new projects possible, as a voting member.

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WeTravel books $27M to build fintech and more for bespoke group travel • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Enterprise, Fintech, Startups, travel, WeTravelNo Comments on WeTravel books $27M to build fintech and more for bespoke group travel • ZebethMedia

Travel is back on the radar for investment, with consumers and business users both on the move again after a long pandemic period of staying in one place. Today, a startup called WeTravel — which builds tech for the specific needs of group travel — has raised $27 million, money that it will be using to expand its business on the heels of strong growth in the last year. The company provides payments and other tools to some 3,000 companies, working out to 500,000 customers using its platform. Transaction volumes have grown 30% and revenues currently sitting at 3X the level it was pre-Covid. And CEO and co-founder Johannes Koeppel said he believes those figures will double again in 2023 “as a conservative estimate.” The Series B is being led by Left Lane Capital, with previous backers Swift Ventures and Base10 also participating alongside angel investors that include Victor Jacobsson, one of the co-founders of Klarna. WeTravel had previously raised only $7 million in the 8 years since it was founded. We understand from sources that this Series B was made at a valuation of a little over $100 million. The startup, fittingly, has done a little traveling of its own. Originally, Keoppel and his two co-founders Garib Mehdiyev (CTO), and Zaky Prabowo (CMO) had moved out from The Netherlands to the Bay Area to start the business, only to find it impossible to navigate the visa waters to bring engineers and other technical talent over, too. So in 2019, WeTravel’s three founders relocated back across the pond to The Netherlands. Covid put paid to the idea that a startup needs to have its team in one place, and today, the majority of the company’s business team and customers are in the U.S., and it’s incorporated there, while the three founders, as well as WeTravel’s product and engineering teams, are all in Amsterdam. The gap in the market WeTravel is going after is one that seems to have been created, ironically, with the growth of online travel services. In the old, pre-internet days, travel agents ruled the roost when it came to booking tickets and overall vacations for many consumers and businesses, both as individuals and groups. Online tools have changed the game for individuals, but interestingly the same doesn’t apply to groups that want to, say, book a multi-day trip or retreat that might involve several hotels, activities, and food, which can involve multiple people, multiple locations, potentially hundreds of suppliers (not just hotels and airlines, but restaurants, excursion operators, insurance providers and much more), and the need for flexible paying options — different people paying different amounts, payments in installments, and lump sum payments that in turn need to be itemized across different suppliers. “The important piece is not so much about paying but what happens afterwards,” Keoppel said, “what the travel company has to do with these funds. A typical trip might cost $10 to the user, with the vast majority of that going to suppliers. It becomes about fund management. And more involved the trip, the larger the amount of suppliers from restaurants and transport companies to airlines and hotels and more.” On top of that there are wire fees and different payment methods business to business, country to country. WeTravel’s platform covers two main parts of that process: helping those putting the group travel together to organize suppliers and plan everything; and then handling the different aspects of the payment process, whether that involves setting up payments in installments, or working with various currencies and payment methods, and paying out to different suppliers under their individual terms. Keoppel describes the fintech side of the business as “the PayPal for travel” and says that it’s complex enough that companies like PayPal, Stripe and other big names in online payments haven’t really been able to address the particular segment of the market that WeTravel is serving, especially when used in tandem with the first part of its product set to coordinate itineraries and suppliers. Keoppel believes this is a template we might be seeing more in the B2B fintech world. “My belief is that there will be in the next couple of years more specific SaaS platforms that integrate payments as component for specific industries,” he said. (Indeed, today you already have some addressing this for, say, beauty and wellness, with companies like Fresha, Boulevard and Style Seat building tools specifically for the needs of that vertical.) This is also something that WeTravel’s customers also have sometimes tried but failed to build themselves. As travel agents have become “travel advisors” and focus on these bespoke travel experiences, some have turned, he said, to “custom-made systems they build themselves, but what I’ve realized is that what is lacking is the end customer experience. They don’t have the time to build the beautiful invoicing system plus payment methods, and all of the rest.” One thing that WeTravel does not currently do is offer discovery to its users — that is, travel advisors might still turn to their little black books, or these days maybe TripAdvisor, Yelp, or other recommendation and discovery platforms, to find interesting restaurants and more. This is something that WeTravel could potentially move into as it grows. `One significant elephant in the room is what happens when other big travel platforms consider how they might do more in this area: they already have all the big supplier relationships and it might be a matter of building or buying tools to meet this use case. Vinny Pujji, who led the investment for Left Lane, recalled that his parents once ran a travel agency, “so this was a cool one for me to see,” he said. “You bump into sneaky big markets and this is absolutely one of them.” He noted that the Covid winter that descended on travel does appear to be thawing, even in the current economic climate. “The data tells us that travel is mostly back now,” he said. He points out thought that

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Dragonfly, Haun Ventures and Sequoia talk web3 and more at TC Sessions: Crypto • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in blockchain, Crypto, Dragonfly, Haun Ventures, Sequoia, TC Sessions: Crypto, TC Sessions: Crypto 2022, Tom SchmidtNo Comments on Dragonfly, Haun Ventures and Sequoia talk web3 and more at TC Sessions: Crypto • ZebethMedia

While the overall crypto markets have been in a rough spot lately, web3 venture capitalists have never had more conviction — or more funding at their disposal — to back startups and teams building in the space. The big question on their minds is whether tokens and startup valuations have bottomed out, or if they need to wait a bit longer to score the best possible deal. When to place your bets is a delicate balance in any tech sector, never mind one as rambunctious as crypto. That’s one reason why we’re stoked that Chris Ahn, partner at Haun Ventures; Michelle Bailhe, partner at Sequoia; and Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly will join us onstage at TC Sessions: Crypto on November 17 in Miami. We’re looking forward to hearing Ahn’s take on how the regulatory landscape is evolving in crypto, both in the U.S. and abroad, and how web3 startups can effectively navigate political and legal uncertainty. We can’t wait to hear Schmidt’s take on what it’s like to be an investor at a crypto-native VC firm as more traditional venture firms move into the space. Is Dragonfly as optimistic about the crypto market as it was last April when the VC firm closed its third venture fund to the (oversubscribed) tune of $650 million? Inquiring minds want to know. Meanwhile, Bailhe brings valuable perspective — from her standpoint as a generalist growth investor at a venture firm that made its name in web2 — on how the web3 space is developing relative to the broader tech ecosystem. We’ll be sure to ask all three panelists how their firms are navigating the competitive dynamics between crypto-native investors and tech VCs with broader mandates for the best web3 deal flow. Chris Ahn, a partner at Haun Ventures, leads investments at both early and acceleration stages. Previously, Ahn was a partner at Index Ventures and led the firm’s crypto efforts, including investments in Fireblocks and Bridge. Prior to joining Index, Ahn helped build and lead the strategic finance and business operations teams at GitHub, and he led the acquisition with Microsoft. Ahn also spent time at Hellman & Friedman and started his career at Morgan Stanley. Michelle Bailhe, a partner at Sequoia, focuses on crypto, software and internet investments. She is involved with Sequoia’s investments in FTX, LayerZero, Fireblocks, Pilot and more. Prior to Sequoia, Bailhe worked at Hellman & Friedman, Google and McKinsey. Prior to joining Dragonfly as general partner, Tom Schmidt led product at 0x, and he worked as a product manager at Facebook and Instagram. Schmidt holds a degree in computer science from Stanford. Take advantage of early-bird pricing. Buy your pass today, and you’ll save $150. Then get ready to join the web3, DeFi and NFT communities at TC Sessions: Crypto on November 17 in Miami.

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Fermyon raises $20M to build tools for cloud app dev • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Amplify Partners, Apps, cloud, Dev, Enterprise, Fermyon, funding, Insight Partners, startup, Startups, WebAssemblyNo Comments on Fermyon raises $20M to build tools for cloud app dev • ZebethMedia

Matt Butcher and Radu Matei worked on container technologies for years, “containers” in this context referring to software packages containing all the necessary elements to run in any environment, from desktop PCs to servers. As engineers at Deis, and then DeisLabs once Microsoft acquired it in 2017, their team explored the container landscape and built the package manager Helm as well as Brigade and other tooling. Along the journey, they faced myriad problems with containers — namely speed and cost. The setbacks spurred them and a handful of other DeisLabs veterans to found Fermyon, which today closed a $20 million Series A funding round led by Insight Partners with participation from Amplify Partners and angel investors. Fermyon offers a managed cloud service, Fermyon Cloud, that allows developers to quickly build microservices, or pieces of apps that work independently, but together (e.g., if one microservice fails, it won’t bring down the others). “Fermyon is building the next wave of cloud services atop WebAssembly,” Butcher said, referring to the open standard that allows web browsers to run binary code. “Originally written for the browser, WebAssembly has all of the earmarks of an excellent cloud compute platform … [Its] combination of features got us excited. Fermyon set out to build a suite of tools that enables developers to build, deploy, and then operate WebAssembly binaries in a cloud context.” Butcher argues WebAssembly is superior to containers in a number of respects, such as start-up time and compatibility across operating systems including Windows, Linux and Mac plus hardware platforms like Intel and Arm. It’s also more secure, he asserts, because it can safely execute even untrusted code. To explore WebAssembly’s container-replacing potential, Fermyon developed Spin, an open source dev tool for creating WebAssembly cloud apps. Fermyon Cloud is the evolution of this work, providing a platform where customers can host those apps. “Fermyon Cloud empowers developers to deploy … applications written in a variety of languages (such as Rust, .NET, Go, JavaScript) and experience brilliantly fast performance,” Butcher said. “[A]nyone with a GitHub account can create cloud native WebAssembly applications … The developer self-service paradigm reduces the friction of building applications by making it not only possible but easy for developers to write and test their code in a production-grade environment — and then deploy the finished version to that same hosted environment. Fermyon Cloud lets devs create up to five web apps or microservices and run them in a hosted environment for free. In addition to hosting applications, the service delivers release management, log access and app  configuration from a web console. With employees now in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, Fermyon’s focus is continuing to build out both its open source and commercial projects, Butcher said. Fermyon Cloud will expand into an “enterprise-ready” commercial offering in the coming months, he added, as Fermyon looks to double its 20-person headcount by mid-2023 — emphasizing product, marketing, developer relations and community roles. “We are well-positioned to weather macro-economic storms due to the financing we’re announcing today,” said Butcher while declining to reveal revenue figures. “[We] have funds to last us several years.” To date, Colorado-based Fermyon has raised $26 million.

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Building the bridge between Web 2.0 and web3 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Column, Crypto, EC Blockchain, EC Column, EC Cryptocurrency, ethereum, Ethereum Merge, Google, Startups, Web 2.0, web3No Comments on Building the bridge between Web 2.0 and web3 • ZebethMedia

Devin Abbott was founder of Deco (acquired by Airbnb) and specializes in design and development tools, React and web3 applications, most recently with The Graph. It’s too early to predict all the implications of the recent Ethereum blockchain Merge, but it definitely addresses the most frequent (and valid) criticism of web3 regarding excessive energy consumption. Critics may still find a new reason to oppose ETH, but my hope is this Merge will lead to something else: A chance for us to also merge what’s best about Web 2.0 with what’s most exciting about web3. There’s seemingly a growing rift in Silicon Valley, with the traditional Web 2.0 industry and the burgeoning web3 ecosystem depicted as being in opposition to each other. And trapped somewhere in the middle are emerging startups. I’m active in all three groups, and I believe most of this controversy is based on wild pronouncements and hype by VCs and other evangelists who are not developers. Incessant celebrity promotions of NFT drops, for instance, have contributed to the impression that web3 as a whole is a Ponzi scheme. In fact, NFTs are only a small part of the web3 ecosystem, and, in my view, not even the most interesting or potentially transformative. While Web 2.0 and web3 may seem incompatible, I believe it’s better to see technologies like blockchain and ETH as potential back-end solutions for scalability challenges that all companies face. In a similar way, web3 advocates should recognize that Web 2.0’s maturity makes it indispensable for many core use cases. Despite web3’s great potential, it’s still much easier to develop a Web 2.0 app simply because the ecosystem is mature and enjoys a large and thriving developer community. Let’s consider a couple examples where each side has something to contribute: From web3: An emerging revolution in open source To capture what’s happening in web3 development now, we have to go back to before the Web 2.0 era. During the dot-com boom, there was quite a lot of buzz over open source, Linux and hot companies like Red Hat. While very few consumers would go on to install Linux as their operating system, this buzz helped contribute to something equally important. In the background, with few people noticing, Linux quickly became the go-to operating system for running the back-end servers of 96.5% of the top million web domains — not to mention the massive Android market.

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The Logitech G Cloud and Shadow are a match made in cloud gaming heaven • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in cloud gaming, Gadgets, Gaming, Logitech, Logitech G Cloud, shadowNo Comments on The Logitech G Cloud and Shadow are a match made in cloud gaming heaven • ZebethMedia

It’s time to accept that cloud gaming is the future of gaming. At least for some people and even though Stadia failed. But that group of people is becoming larger every year. For the past few weeks, I have been playing video games on a brand new device — the Logitech G Cloud. But my games weren’t actually running on Logitech’s gaming handheld. Instead, I relied on cloud computing service Shadow to run those games. And I have to say that this experience has completely changed how I feel about cloud gaming. Playing on the Logitech G Cloud with Shadow has been mostly a smooth experience. More importantly, I’ve had a ton of fun in the process. Image Credits: Romain Dillet / ZebethMedia An Android console designed for cloud gaming But first, what is the Logitech G Cloud? While you may be familiar with the Nintendo Switch and the Steam Deck, you may have never heard of the Logitech G Cloud. As you can see in the photos, Logitech’s device looks familiar if you own a Nintendo Switch a Steam Deck. It is essentially a 7-inch display surrounded by gamepad-like controls on each side of the display. But the comparison stops here as the Logitech G Cloud isn’t designed to run games natively. It runs Android apps and has mid-range specifications at best. Instead, the device has been created as a thin client to access cloud gaming services. That’s why it’s interesting to see that many gamers are just missing the point. For instance, this YouTube video titled “The G Stands For Garbage” mostly mentions emulation performance and Android games. Logitech is a peripheral manufacturer. And the Logitech G Cloud should be considered as such. A peripheral for cloud gaming services. A controller with a display. A physical extension of a server in a data center near you. Image Credits: Romain Dillet / ZebethMedia Now that we have defined the expectations more clearly, I can safely say that Logitech delivers nicely on its original premise. The device feels great in your hand thanks to textured, rounded grips. It feels sturdy but it’s not too heavy. In my experience playing Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Rocket League, Hitman 3 or Celeste, the buttons work well. Logitech has chosen the Xbox gamepad layout with A/B/X/Y buttons, two analog joysticks, two analog triggers, two bumper buttons and haptic feedback. There are a handful of extra buttons to get back home or launch the Xbox overlay menu when you’re playing a game on Xbox Cloud Gaming. The Logitech G Cloud weighs 463g — that’s roughly 30% lighter than the Steam Deck and a bit heavier than a Nintendo Switch with Joy-Con controllers attached. I’ve had long gaming sessions without feeling any issues in my hands or forearms. Under the hood, the Logitech G Cloud sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G system on a chip with 4GB of RAM. It has 64GB of storage that you can expand with a microSD card. It supports WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1. There are also a 3.5mm headphone jack, stereo speakers and stereo microphones. On paper, you get just the right amount of computing power to run cloud gaming services, but nothing extra. But it’s a shame that Logitech didn’t choose WiFi 6 over WiFi 5 given how crucial latency and internet bandwidth are for cloud gaming. The USB-C port also doesn’t support video output, which means that you won’t be able to plug the device to a TV. The built-in display has a 1080p resolution, which is nice, but it doesn’t have a great viewing angle. So you have to be right in front of the device. All of this is fine and you tend to forget those details when you start playing. But my biggest complaint about the Logitech G Cloud is that it isn’t cheap — it costs $350. There are two ways to think about the pricing issue. Logitech products tend to be on the expensive side and it doesn’t seem too expensive when you compare the device to midrange smartphones. But the Nintendo Switch is cheaper and the Steam Deck is just slightly more expensive. The Logitech G Cloud runs Android 11 with a custom launcher that has been co-developed with Tencent. If you only need to go through your list of most recent apps or favorite apps, it works fine. But it’s still rough around the edges, especially in the settings and the notification menus. I hope Logitech will ship software updates to improve the launcher. If you accidentally bought the Logitech G Cloud to use it as an Android tablet, you can also disable the custom launcher entirely and get the default Android experience. Image Credits: Romain Dillet / ZebethMedia Running Shadow The Logitech G Cloud comes with a few pre-installed gaming apps, such as Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce Now on the cloud gaming front, Steam Link and the Xbox app for remote play in case you own a gaming PC or an Xbox console already. You can also install any app you want from Google Play. For instance, I installed Shadow’s app to access their cloud computing service. If you are not familiar with Shadow, the French company has been working on a cloud computing service for gamers. People can pay a monthly subscription fee to access a full-fledged computer in a data center near them. It is a Windows instance, which means you can install whatever you want. Shadow starts at $29.99 per month for a machine with the equivalent of an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. On October 26, Shadow is releasing a high-end configuration. For another $14.99 per month (so $44.98 per month in total), subscribers get an AMD EPYC 7543P CPU with 4 cores and 8 threads, 16GB of RAM and a recent GPU, such as an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 or the equivalent GPU in Nvidia’s professional GPU lineup, or a professional AMD Radeon GPU based on the RDNA

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Australia to toughen privacy laws with huge hike in penalties for breaches • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Australia, data breaches, Government & Policy, medibank breach, Optus breach, Privacy, privacy lawsNo Comments on Australia to toughen privacy laws with huge hike in penalties for breaches • ZebethMedia

Australia has confirmed an incoming legislative change will significant strengthen its online privacy laws following a spate of data breaches in recent weeks — such as the Optus telco breach last month. “Unfortunately, significant privacy breaches in recent weeks have shown existing safeguards are inadequate. It’s not enough for a penalty for a major data breach to be seen as the cost of doing business,” said its attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, in a statement at the weekend. “We need better laws to regulate how companies manage the huge amount of data they collect, and bigger penalties to incentivise better behaviour.” The changes will be made via an amendment to the country’s privacy laws, following a long process of consultation on reforms. Dreyfus said the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022 will increase the maximum penalties that can be applied under the Privacy Act 1988 for serious or repeated privacy breaches from the current AUS $2.22 million (~$1.4M) penalty to whichever is the greater of: AUS $50 million (~$32M); 3x the value of any benefit obtained through the misuse of information; or 30% of a company’s adjusted turnover in the relevant period These amounts are substantially higher than an earlier draft of the reform last year (when penalties of AUS $10M or 10% of turnover were being considered). Major breaches such as at Optus — and another that followed hard on its heels, at the health insurer Medibank Private — appear to have concentrated lawmakers’ minds. The change of government, earlier this year, also means there’s a new broom at work. Additional changes trailed by Dreyfus include greater powers for the Australian information commissioner and a beefed up Notifiable Data Breaches scheme to provide the privacy watchdog with a more comprehensive view of what’s been compromised in a breach, also so it can assess the risk of harm to individuals. The information commissioner and the Australian Communications and Media Authority will also be furnished with greater information sharing powers to enable more regulatory joint-working. Both agencies opened investigations of Optus following last month’s breach. The privacy legislation amendment bill is slated to be presented to Australia’s parliament this week, per Reuters. The Attorney-General’s Department is also undertaking a comprehensive review of the Privacy Act that’s due to be completed this year, with recommendations expected for further reform, it said. “I look forward to support from across the Parliament for this Bill, which is an essential part of the Government’s agenda to ensure Australia’s privacy framework is able to respond to new challenges in the digital era. The Albanese Government is committed to protecting Australians’ personal information and to further strengthening privacy laws,” added Dreyfus.

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