Microsoft is proud to announce its support for Red Nose Day, a charitable campaign from Comic Relief USA to end child poverty, one nose at a time. Originating in the United Kingdom, Red Nose Day launched in the United States in 2015 and to-date has raised nearly $150 million, and positively impacting the lives of over 16 million children across the nation and around the world. Through the power of entertainment, Red Nose Day raises money and awareness to keep children in need safe, healthy and educated. From now till June 1, you can also help support Red Nose Day and its efforts to end child poverty with a purchase of a Red Nose and Red Nose Day branded products at Walgreens stores nationwide, including certain Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold memberships. In support of these efforts, there will be a donation of $100,000 to Red Nose Day. In addition, from May 16-23, for every new sign up for a paid one or three month Xbox Game Pass membership through the Xbox Dashboard in the US, we will donate $1 to Red Nose Day – up to $150,000. More details, as well as a reminder of this offer, will be available on the Xbox Dashboard and on @Xbox (terms and conditions do apply). Red Nose Day takes place Thursday, May 23 culminating with a special night of prime-time programming on NBC at 8/7c. This Red Nose Day, millions of Americans, celebrities and businesses will be come together, wearing their Red Noses, and fundraising and donating to help end child poverty. We’ll have our Noses On and hope you’ll join us in supporting this amazing cause.
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KeepTruckin, a developer of hardware and software that helps truck drivers manage their vehicles and cargo, has raised $149 million in Series D funding. Greenoaks Capital has led the round, with participation from existing backers GV, IVP, Index Ventures and Scale Venture Partners. The round values the business at $1.25 billion, according to KeepTruckin co-founder and chief executive officer Shoaib Makani. Since it was founded in 2013, KeepTruckin has accumulated 55,000 unique customers, deploying its software in hundreds of thousands of vehicles. The San Francisco-headquartered company will use the latest investment to double its employee headcount to 2,000 in the next 12 to 18 months. “Our technology really improves the life of the driver,” Makani told TechCrunch. “These are real people doing work that keeps our economy moving. Trucking is really the foundation of the American economy. More than 70 percent of all freight is moved over the road in a truck. This is how we eat, consume and produce; without it, our economy wouldn’t thrive.” The Series D financing brings KeepTruckin’s total raised to $228 million, including a $50 million Series C that closed in March 2018. KeepTruckin’s software is intended to bring the antiquated trucking industry into the digital age. Its platform provides electronic logs and fleet management tools, including GPS tracking and driver performance monitoring for fleet managers and dispatchers to track and communicate with their drivers. “We are competing against paper and pencil,” Makani explained. Makani left Khosla Ventures, where he had been an investor in early-stage consumer and enterprise companies since 2011, in 2013 to build KeepTruckin. At the time, the beginnings of a new sector focused on tech-enabled logistics was beginning to emerge. Since then, several companies have launched and scaled with similar focuses. There’s Convoy in Seattle, for example, which also operates a network of connected-trucks. Uber Freight, the logistics and supply chain management business inside Uber. And Huochebang, a Chinese mobile app dubbed the “Uber-for-Trucks.” “Trucking is forecasted to be a $1 trillion industry by 2024 and is the backbone of the global economy, yet has been underserved by technology but change is coming and KeepTruckin is at the leading edge,” Greenoaks managing partner Neil Mehta said in a statement. “KeepTruckin is building the technology that trucking companies need to compete in the modern economy. The network that KeepTruckin has built will enable it to change the way freight is moved on our roads.” With iOS 13, Apple will let third-party apps import photos directly from external storage, reports 9to5Mac. If true, this would bring an end one of our key frustrations with iOS on the iPad Pro which requires importing images into the system’s camera roll before you can move them into an app like Lightroom CC. Apple previously released a Siri Shortcut to automate the process, but the new feature will make this unnecessary on the USB-C tablet aimed at professionals. Apple also reportedly plans to announce improvements to Marzipan apps, Siri, and ARKit — Apple’s augmented reality developer kit. The iOS and macOS changes, first reported by 9to5Mac, were compiled by Guilherme Rambo with an assist from Steve Troughton-Smith.
All these new features are due to be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in June, where the company is expected to unveil iOS 13, tvOS 13, macOS 10.15, and watchOS 6. Avengers fans, assemble! You're going to want to see the Avengers: Endgame cast's epic cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." The stars of the film teamed up with Jimmy Fallon for a Tonight Show video, released on Monday night, and thoroughly covered the Marvel franchise from start to finish. You know who has the real superpowers? Whoever had to put those song lyrics together. From Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man to Brie Larson's Captain Marvel, the video is a great (albeit very fast) refresher on how every hero came into play before the next installment's release on April 26. Watch the full cover to hear the clever lyrics for yourself, and catch the touching tribute to Stan Lee at the end. Mortal Kombat 11 battles its way to Xbox One today culminating in nearly 25 years’ worth of lore, combat, and brutality. NetherRealm Studios (Mortal Kombat X, Injustice 2) returns once again as the award-winning developer for Mortal Kombat 11, bringing with them decades of fighting game creation experience to this newest entry of this historic franchise. All your favorite characters return like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Baraka, Sonya Blade, Raiden, in addition to new characters making their mark on the series, like Geras, a powerful and loyal servant of Kronika who can manipulate time. Each fighter also comes with her or his own unique abilities and series-signature fatalities to deliver perhaps the largest and most diverse cast of combatants in the game’s rich history. And if these characters don’t happen to be to your liking, the robust and all-new character variation system gives you nearly infinite customization options. You’ll be able to change everything from skins to gear to special abilities as well as your intro, taunts, and brutalities – all of which can be unlocked through Mortal Kombat 11 gameplay. Wrapping all of these features and fighters together is a new cinematic story mode that continues the events of Mortal Kombat X, featuring characters both past and present in a time-bending adventure that sets Raiden against Kronika, the Keeper of Time who created existence at the dawn of history. With a slew of new character customization features, a new cinematic story mode, and featuring vicious one-on-one fighting gameplay the series has come to be known for, Mortal Kombat 11 is one of the biggest Xbox One games of the year and is not to be missed. Get it today on the Microsoft Store. Mortal Kombat 11 is available now on Xbox One via the Microsoft Store and is enhanced for Xbox One X. Click here for purchase details. Ruthless copying is common in tech. Just ask Snapchat. However, it’s typically more conceptual than literal. But car API startup Smartcar claims that its competitor Otonomo copy-and-pasted Smartcar’s API documentation, allegedly plagiarizing it extensively to the point of including the original’s typos and randomly generated strings of code. It’s published a series of side-by-side screenshots detailing the supposed theft of its intellectual property. Smartcar CEO Sahas Katta says “We do have evidence of several of their employees systemically using our product with behavior indicating they wanted to copy our product in both form and function.” Now a spokesperson for the startup tells me “We’ve filed a cease-and-desist letter, delivered to Otonomo this morning, that contains documented aspects of different breaches and violations.” The accusations are troubling given Otonomo is not some inconsequential upstart. The Israel-based company has raised over $50 million since its founding in 2015, and its investors include auto parts giant Aptiv (formerly Delphi) and prestigious VC firm Bessemer Ventures Partners. Otonomo CMO Lisa Joy provided this statement in response to the allegations, noting it will investigate but is confident it acted with integrity:
Both startups are trying to build an API layer that connects data from cars with app developers so they can build products that can locate, unlock, or harness data from vehicles. The 20-person Mountain View-based Smartcar has raised $12 million from Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. A major deciding factor in who’ll win this market is which platform offers the best documentation that makes it easiest for developers to integrate the APIs. “A few days ago, we came across Otonomo’s publicly available API documentation. As we read through it, we quickly realized that something was off. It looked familiar. Oddly familiar. That’s because we wrote it” Smartcar explains in its blog post. “We didn’t just find a few vague similarities to Smartcar’s documentation. Otonomo’s docs are a systematically written rip-off of ours – from the overall structure, right down to code samples and even typos.” The screenshot above comparing API documentation from Smartcar on the left and Otonomo on the right appears to show Otonomo used nearly identical formatting and the exact same randomly generated sample identifier (highlighted) as Smartcar. Further examples flag seemingly identical code strings and snippets. Otonomo has pulled down their docs.otonomo.io documentation website, but TechCrunch has reviewed an Archive.org Wayback Machine showing this Otonomo site as of April 5, 2019 featured sections that are identical to the documentation Smartcar published in August 2018. That includes Smartcar’s typo “it will returned here”, and its randomly generated sample code placeholder “”4a1b01e5-0497-417c-a30e-6df6ba33ba46” which both appear in the Wayback Machine copy of Otonomo’s docs. The typo was fixed in this version of Otonomo’s docs that’s still publicly available, but that code string remains. “It would be a one in a quintillion chance of them happening to land on the same randomly generated string” Smartcar’s Katta tells TechCrunch. Yet curiously, Otonomo’s CMO told TechCrunch that “The materials that [Smartcar] put on their post are all publicly accessible documentation, It’s all public domain content.” But that’s not true, Katta argues, given the definition of ‘public domain’ is content belonging to the public that’s uncopyrightable. “I would sure hope not, considering . . . we have proper copyright notices at the bottom. Our product is our intellectual property. Just like Twilio’s API documentation or Stripe’s, it is published and publicly available — and it is proprietary.” Otonomo’s Lisa Joy noted that her startup is currently fundraising for its Series C, which reportedly already includes $10 million from South Korean energy and telecom holdings giant SK. “We’re in the middle of raising a round right now. That round is not done” she told me. But if Otonomo gets a reputation for allegedly copying its API docs, that could hurt its standing with developers and potentially endanger that funding round. AT&T may have just amicably settled a false advertising lawsuit with Sprint over its “5G Evolution” branding, but the company’s apparent marketing strategy here is proving to be a disaster. Rather than taking a victory lap for arriving at real 5G faster than its US competitors — AT&T’s actual 5G network currently supports more cities than Verizon’s — the company is still clinging to a meaningless, confusing logo it refuses to walk away from. While AT&T has stated plainly that 5G Evolution isn’t actually 5G, in that it doesn’t meet the technical or speed standards to be classified as such, the end goal seems to be tricking its own customers into thinking they’re accessing a next-generation network through pure obfuscation. The end result: a whole lot of confusion and news outlets, like The Verge, having to routinely stress that 5G E is a misleading attempt to gin up hype with no basis in hard data. Just take a look at prominent technology CEO Marc Benioff, who runs cloud computing company Salesforce. Earlier today, Benioff asked his Twitter audience of nearly 1 million people why his phone was displaying a 5G logo, and whether that meant he had access to the next-gen network, similar to one that is in fact up and running in South Korea and accessible using the special 5G variant of the Samsung Galaxy S10. (That version of the S10 is not yet available in the US.)
So yes, even the chief executive of a technology company seems to be confused by AT&T’s branding. (He may just been engaging in a bit of facetious argument; we’ve reached to Benioff on Twitter to see if he’ll clarify his intentions with the tweet.) Regardless, there are A&T customers out there who are legitimately confused. When I wrote about AT&T’s 5G deployment earlier this month, in which it boasted about 5G availability in 19 US cities despite not having any commercially available devices to make use of it, a confused reader emailed me to similarly tell me that he thought he had access to the network on his phone. The included screenshot this reader attached featured an iPhone home screen with the 5G E logo in the upper righthand corner. I had to write back and explain that no, it was not in fact real 5G. At least one Verge editor has also had to explain to a confused family member that they have not in fact received a network upgrade overnight; countless examples of other AT&T subscribers have voiced similar confusion online. Now, that’s not to say that AT&T’s network hasn’t been getting faster over time. It is, according to speed test data collected by firms like Ookla and submitted to The Verge by users running individual speed tests. But as pointed out in the past, the speed bumps aren’t as dramatic as AT&T makes them sound, and they have nothing to do with 5G. The data used to make AT&T’s speeds sound more impressive also come with a lot of caveats, like the fact that the 5G E logo’s appearance on newer iPhones caused an influx of new tests that skewed more recent data in AT&T’s favor. In some cases, the speeds you get on 5G E on AT&T’s network may in fact be slower than the speeds you’ll receive on T-Mobile and Verizon using smartphones that can access LTE Advanced and Advanced Pro technologies, which are the variants of LTE that AT&T has rebranded as 5G E. That’s all 5G E really is — rebranded LTE network technologies. OpenSignal, the analytics firm behind the study revealing that embarrassing data point, called 5G E “a meaningless marketing move designed to confuse customers and make AT&T seem like it has a technological leg up on the cutting edge of wireless technology.” In stronger terms, the company added, “It is, plainly speaking, bullshit.” But AT&T doesn’t seem to care. In settling its false advertising suit with Sprint today, AT&T plans to continue using 5G E marketing, according to anonymous sources cited by the Dallas Business Journal. And when initially defending itself from Sprint, which brought the lawsuit after a survey found more than half of participants thought 5G E was comparable to real 5G, AT&T said its “customers want and deserve to know when they are getting better speeds.” The company claimed it had done enough to clarify the difference between 5G E and standard 5G. Not enough, in appears, for prominent tech figures like Benioff and for countless AT&T customers. AT&T was not immediately available for comment for this story. The real test, of course, will be when smartphones do finally have the requisite 5G modems required to access AT&T’s next-gen network, and the company has to explain yet again that there’s a new, faster technology on the block that’s different than before. When that happens, I’m sure AT&T hopes people suddenly know and recognize the difference between 5G E and the genuine article. Because it will be a real challenge to boast to customers about next-gen network deployment after spending months tricking those same users into thinking that network has already arrived. Archbishop: "William Arthur Philip Louis, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together according to God's law in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?" Prince William: "I will." Archbishop to Catherine: "Catherine Elizabeth, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together according to God's law in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?" Kate Middleton: "I will." Archbishop: "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" PW: "I, William Arthur Philip Louis, take thee, Catherine Elizabeth to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy law; and thereto I give thee my troth." KM: "I, Catherine Elizabeth, take thee, William Arthur Philip Louis, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy law; and thereto I give thee my troth." Archbishop: "Bless, O Lord, this ring, and grant that he who gives it and she who shall wear it may remain faithful to each other, and abide in thy peace and favor, and live together in love until their lives' end. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." PW: "With this ring I thee wed; with my body I thee honor; and all my worldly goods with thee I share: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." Archbishop: "Let us pray. O Eternal God, Creator, and Preserver of all mankind, giver of all spiritual grace, the author of everlasting life: send thy blessing upon these thy servants, this man and this woman, whom we bless in thy name; that, living faithfully together, they may surely perform and keep the vow and covenant betwixt them made, whereof this ring given and received is a token and pledge; and may ever remain in perfect love and peace together, and live according to thy laws; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.For as much as William and Catherine have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth either to other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by joining of hands; I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve, and keep you; the Lord mercifully with his favor look upon you; and so fill you with all spiritual benediction and grace, that ye may so live together in this life, that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting. Amen." Last week, Amazon and Google rolled out free music streaming services to cater to the growing base of smart speaker owners. Now, SiriusXM is going after this market, too. The company has launched a new plan called SiriusXM Essential which targets those who listen in-home and on mobile devices, but not in cars. The streaming-only plan is also more affordable — $8 per month, versus the $15.99 per month (and up) plans for SiriusXM’s satellite radio service for cars. With a subscription to Essential, customers can stream to in-home devices including Amazon Alexa, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, Sonos speakers, Xbox, Sony PlayStation and others, as well as to phones, tablets, and desktops. The plan offers SiriusXM’s full lineup of over 300 channels, including 200+ channels of commercial-free music stations, and its new Pandora NOW station. There are also 100+ of the newer SiriusXM Xtra channels that offer more music and the ability to skip through songs. Beyond music, listeners can access sport talk channels, as well as entertainment, news and comedy stations. “The strength of SiriusXM’s programming is evident in the tens of millions of people who subscribe and listen in their cars year after year. We’ve now created the Essential subscription as an appealing option for the many people, particularly younger consumers, who don’t have a car or don’t spend a lot of time in their car,” said Matt Epstein, Vice President of Marketing, SiriusXM Outside the Car, in a statement. “The Essential plan offers an attractive bundle of content at a competitively low price among streaming services,” he added. The launch comes at a time when several markets are adjusting to better serve a younger demographic that often lives more urban, and doesn’t own a car — or waits until later in life to get one, having also delayed things like marriage, home ownership, and starting a family. That cuts into SiriusXM’s core business of offering in-car subscription radio. The new plan also arrives just as smart speaker ownership has hit critical mass in the U.S. That’s led to increased competition from streaming music providers, who have now launched entry-level free services to reach listeners in the home. Amazon and Google, for instance, both launched ad-supported free music services last week for their respective smart speakers — the Amazon Echo and Google Home. These free tiers serve as funnels to the companies’ premium, paid subscriptions. Similarly, SiriusXM’s lower-cost subscription plan could later send its users over to pricier plans, if they later on do acquire a vehicle. But it also caters to those who want a more radio-like experience, with news, sports, and entertainment, not just music; plus always-on streams of curated music, not playlists programmed by A.I. SiriusXM Essential is $1 per month for three months before converting to the full price of $8 per month. Russian hackers recently attacked a number of US embassies around the world by emailing malicious attachments disguised as official State Department documents to officials, according to a new report from Check Point Research. The hackers targeted US embassies in Nepal, Guyana, Kenya, Italy, Liberia, Bermuda, and Lebanon, among others. They typically emailed the officials Microsoft Excel sheets with malicious macros that appeared to have originated from the State Department. Once opened, the hackers were able to gain full control of the infected computer by weaponizing installed software called TeamViewer, a popular remote access service. “It is hard to tell if there are geopolitical motives behind this campaign by looking solely at the list of countries it was targeting,” the press release says, “since it was not after a specific region and the victims came from different places in the world.” Government finance officials were also subject to these attacks, and Check Point notes that these victims were of particular interest to the hackers. “They all appear to be handpicked government officials from several revenue authorities,” the press release says. The hackers appeared to be highly sophisticated, carefully planning out the attacks, using decoy documents tailored to their victim’s interests, and targeting specific government officials. At the same time, other stages of the attack were carried out with less caution leaving personal information and browsing history belonging to the perpetrator exposed. Check Point identified several other similar attack campaigns, including some targeting Russian-speaking victims as well. While Russian in origin, it’s unlikely that these attacks were state-sponsored. One perpetrator was traced back a hacking and carding forum and registered under the same username, “EvaPiks,” on both. EvaPiks posted instructions for how to carry out this kind of cyberattack on forums and advised other users as well. Due to the attackers’ background in the illegal carding community, Check Point suggested that they could have been “financially motivated.” |
AuthorAt the moment I'm exporting jigsaw puzzles in Prescott, AZ. Once had a dream of getting my feet wet with crayon art in Orlando, FL. Spent a year training wooden trains in Salisbury, MD. Spent childhood selling salsa for the underprivileged. Had moderate success building Virgin Mary figurines on the black market. Archives
April 2019
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