Tag Archives: Blog

News: Clubhouse ventures beyond audio with Backchannel, a new messaging feature

• July 14, 2021
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We knew DMs were on the way to Clubhouse and today the new feature landed, spicing up the audio-only app with a text-based chat feature. Clubhouse’s new direct messaging system, called “Backchannel,” gives users an oft-requested way to start conversations behind the scenes on the social audio app. Backchannel offers both one-on-one messaging as well

We knew DMs were on the way to Clubhouse and today the new feature landed, spicing up the audio-only app with a text-based chat feature. Clubhouse’s new direct messaging system, called “Backchannel,” gives users an oft-requested way to start conversations behind the scenes on the social audio app.

Backchannel offers both one-on-one messaging as well as group chat and generally adds quite a bit of utility into the voice-only social network. Speakers can organize in advance or coordinate live through messaging while running a room. They can also accept text-based questions, which some listeners are probably more comfortable with.

Clubhouse users can send links but not images or videos through Backchannel for now, but it sounds like more new features just around the corner. The messaging system also includes a message request area where communication from people you don’t know lives until you approve it. So far, Clubhouse’s DMs are focused on chatting with people you know or people you’d like to know. Without a room-wide text chat option, the main action will remain firmly centered in voice-based rooms.

The messaging system is live now across Clubhouse’s iOS and Android apps. To start a DM — fine, a “Backchannel” — look for the little paper airplane icon on anybody’s profile page or swipe right from the main menu to pull it up. One thing worth noting: It doesn’t look like you can delete messages yet (though you can copy or report them!), so be sure you really mean whatever it is that you’re backchanneling about.

News: Could Cloud PCs be Microsoft’s gateway to Chromebook-like hardware?

• July 14, 2021
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When Microsoft announced that it was releasing a cloud PC service called Windows 365 this morning, it got me thinking. While Windows 365 is about packaging a virtual Windows business desktop in a cloud context, if you think about the announcement in a different way, perhaps it could herald the beginning of a lightweight, cloud-based

When Microsoft announced that it was releasing a cloud PC service called Windows 365 this morning, it got me thinking. While Windows 365 is about packaging a virtual Windows business desktop in a cloud context, if you think about the announcement in a different way, perhaps it could herald the beginning of a lightweight, cloud-based version of Windows — something that has been talked about for some time.

To be clear, the cloud PC announcement wasn’t related to hardware at all. It’s taking a Windows desktop and moving it fully virtualized to the cloud where you can run it from anywhere giving you a replica of your Windows desktop PC in the cloud. But what if you stretched that idea a bit by taking Microsoft 365 with Office apps and threw it onto a low-cost PC and used the Edge browser as your primary way of interacting with the computer? Now you have something that could compete directly with a Chromebook-style computer.

That’s exactly what Google has done with Chrome and Chromebooks for over a decade, working with partners to deliver low-cost hardware with most required compute work taking place in the cloud. The Chrome browser is the primary desktop environment, Google Workspace (aka G Suite) is the default set of office suite apps with word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software along with email and calendar and other services. In fact, you can run any software service you wish in Chrome including Microsoft’s cloud office tools. Regardless, the end-result of this is a low-end business (or personal) laptop that gets most of its power from the cloud.

Most people don’t need a modern notebook computer, and the hardware required to run full-strength operating systems contributes to the high cost of the underlying machine, something Google discovered long ago. If you simplified everything to a browser, an office suite, and web access to your favorite tools, you would have just about everything you need without all of the management headaches associated with owning a PC with a traditional OS sitting on it.

Think about the person who just uses email, office tools and watches a little Netflix. This kind of machine would be perfect for them without blowing their budget out of the water or being overly complex.

Last year when the pandemic hit and everyone had to hunker down and work on a PC including children, people went looking for a low-cost option. They voted for Chromebook in droves accounting for over 30 million units sold, including over 11 million in the fourth quarter alone, according to Canalys data.

While growth slowed a bit in the first quarter of this year, Canalys found Chromebook shipments still grew by 275%. Brian Lynch, an analyst at Canalys wrote in the report that “Chromebooks are well and truly a mainstream computing product now,” adding that “while the education sector still accounts for the majority of shipments, their popularity with consumers and traditional commercial customers has reached new heights over the course of the last year.”

Windows did well too, but given the number of Chromebooks flying off the shelves — led by Lenovo and HP, two companies that also make machines running Microsoft software — a Windows-based cloud PC could give Chromebook a run for its money.

It’s worth noting that, yes, there are low-cost Windows PCs out there. You can get one at Walmart for $149, which competes price-wise with any Chromebook computer out there, but these lower end Windows machines are still a full-fledged Windows PC and you still have to deal with all the management. From an IT (or personal use) perspective, Chromebooks are much easier to manage than Windows PCs.

Since Satya Nadella came on board as CEO at Microsoft in 2014, the company has shown a strong willingness to shift its focus away from the PC where it made its name (and its money) and move toward the cloud. So far, Redmond has done well moving in that direction with its market cap recently breaking the $2 trillion threshold.

What’s more, Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure market share sits at around 20%, more than doubling where it was in 2014 when Nadella took over. Even more, the company had around 16% of cloud office suite market share in 2014, a figure that has grown to 40% today. Google’s office suite is the fairest of them all though with almost 60%, according to Statista. That is due at least in part to its Chromebook sales pushing users towards its suite.

If Microsoft wants to dent that number, a good way to do that would be to create a cloud-based notebook that looks a lot like Chromebook, but with a Windows bent. It would mean eating into their traditional desktop PC OS dominance, but much like in 2014, it could be about trading a past with diminishing returns for a future with much more promising ones.

News: Semiconductor wafer producer SK Siltron to invest $300M in US to boost EV supply chain

• July 14, 2021
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The United States has fallen behind China and Europe in the production and adoption of electric vehicles, especially from 2017 to 2020, according to a study by the International Council on Clean Transportation. One important piece of the puzzle that the U.S. does have supremacy in, however, is the production of semiconductors, which are used

The United States has fallen behind China and Europe in the production and adoption of electric vehicles, especially from 2017 to 2020, according to a study by the International Council on Clean Transportation. One important piece of the puzzle that the U.S. does have supremacy in, however, is the production of semiconductors, which are used in everything from smartphones to computers to electric vehicles. Now, it might be strengthening that hold.

SK Siltron CSS, a unit of South Korean semiconductor wafer manufacturer, SK Siltron, announced Wednesday plans to invest $300 million and create up to 150 high-paying, skilled jobs in Bay County, Michigan, which is about a couple hours north of Detroit, the country’s first automaking haven. The wafer manufacturer already has a presence in nearby Auburn, so the new factory will more than double its employee base. Over the next three years, SK Siltron says its investment will provide manufacturing and R&D capabilities of advanced materials for electric vehicles.

SK Siltron CSS Chief Executive Jianwei Dong told Reuters, which first reported the news, the $300 million investment would “help develop a domestic EV supply chain based in Michigan because we have our end customers in nearby communities.”

This new investment comes amid an ever-increasing lineup of new electric vehicles and investments in electrification from American automakers, including legacy companies General Motors and Ford as well as Tesla and upstarts such as Rivian.

It’s also joining the sticky pot of trade wars between China and the U.S.

China has owned EV production globally, producing 44% of all vehicles made from 2010 to 2020, but the U.S. has put a strangle hold on semiconductors, consistently blocking China from acquiring other chipmakers. Strong policies that both invest in EV production and spur demand have proven successful in both China and Europe, according to the ICCT report. The Biden administration’s call for $174 billion in funding to expand EV subsidies and charging networks could help the country catch up.

“As we build toward a more sustainable future, it is important that we create new, robust supply chains in the U.S. to support our corporations and the end consumer,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo in a statement. “The automotive industry has a tremendous opportunity with the rise of the electric vehicle, and we’re excited to see companies like SK Siltron CSS expanding to help support the transition to a green future.”

The SK Siltron CSS expansion still needs approval from state and local authorities, the company said, although it’s unlikely it will meet much resistance. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation said the state has been trying to attract EV-related jobs, spending nearly $9 billion in investments over the last two years and adding more than 10,000 jobs for the EV transition. SK Siltron said as it works with the state and local agencies to find employees, 70% will be skilled workers and the rest will be professional engineers.

Wafers 101

A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor that’s used to make integrated circuits, which essentially help make semiconductor chips smaller and faster. The wafer serves as the base upon which the rest of the semiconductor is built, making it crucial ingredient to the whole process. EVs need semiconductors because they allow batteries to operate at higher voltages, drive the powertrain and support modern car features like touchscreen interactivity.

SK Siltron’s wafer is made of silicon carbide, which can handle higher powers and conduct heat better than normal silicon, the company says.

“When used in EV system components, this characteristic can allow a more efficient transfer of electricity from the battery to the motor, increasing the driving range of an EV by 5% to 10%,” the company said in a statement.

The wafers can also be used in 5G communications equipment, and Dong told Reuters that the company is also considering additional investments.

News: Toyota’s Woven Planet acquires HD mapping startup Carmera

• July 14, 2021
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Woven Planet Holdings — an entity created by Toyota to invest in, develop and eventually bring future of transportation technologies like automated driving to market — has acquired HD mapping startup Carmera for an undisclosed amount. The announcement comes less than two months since Woven Planet Holdings acquired Lyft’s autonomous vehicle unit known as Level

Woven Planet Holdings — an entity created by Toyota to invest in, develop and eventually bring future of transportation technologies like automated driving to market — has acquired HD mapping startup Carmera for an undisclosed amount. The announcement comes less than two months since Woven Planet Holdings acquired Lyft’s autonomous vehicle unit known as Level 5 for $550 million.

It also follows another HD mapping acquisition — Nvidia’s purchase of DeepMap — that was announced in June.

Under terms of the deal, Carmera will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Woven Planet. The startup’s 50-person team will maintain its offices in New York and Seattle and will eventually be integrated into Woven Planet’s 1,000-person-and-growing enterprise, according to Woven Planet CEO James Kuffner.

Carmera will essentially become the U.S. outpost of Woven Planet’s automated mapping platform (AMP) team, which is headquartered in Tokyo. Ro Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Carmera, will report up to Mandali Khalesi who heads up AMP.

Carmera launched in 2015 with a barter type business model that uses data collected from a service it provides for free to commercial fleet operators to maintain and expand its primary mapping product. Carmera’s main and initial product is a high-definition map developed for autonomous vehicle customers like automakers, suppliers and robotaxis. Autonomous vehicle startup Voyage, which was acquired this year by Cruise, was an early Carmera customer. Baidu also used Carmera’s technology to support the open source Apollo mapping project.

The company uses data crowdsourced from its fleet-monitoring service product to keep those AV maps fresh. The fleet product is a telematics and video monitoring service used by professional fleets that want to manage risk and improve safety with their vehicles and drivers. These fleets of camera-equipped human-driven vehicles deliver new information to the autonomous map as they go about their daily business in cities.

Carmera has evolved its product lineup over time. It added a real-time events and change-management engine to its autonomous map and created a spatial data and street analytics product for cities and urban planners. Last year, Carmera launched it’s so-called Change-as-a-Service platform, a suite of products that detects changes and can be integrated into other third-party maps.

“The problem I’ve always had with some of the HD map companies is it’s nice that you have this capability, but until you can figure out how to scale it, host it and keep it updated, you’re stuck in the ‘I-have-a-neat-piece-of-software-that-someone-is-going-to-buy-from-me role,’” Mike Ramsey, VP analyst at Gartner said. “This deal solves Carmera’s scale problem.”

Image Credits: Carmera

While Carmera is tiny in size and capital compared to Woven Planet, those following the industry might have predicted this union.

Carmera has been working with Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development, which was the impetus of Woven Planet, for three years. The startup first participated in a proof of concept project in Japan to develop camera-based automation of HD maps for urban and surface roads. The partnership expanded in 2020 to include mapping of roadways in Detroit and other roads in Michigan as well as in Japan.

“It was really easy to invest a lot into the relationship,” Gupta said reflecting on Carmera’s first partnership with Toyota in 2018. “The vision was just so similar; it’s almost eerie looking at our seed deck from five years ago and comparing it to what Woven Planet’s overall vision is and their vision for this automated mapping platform.”

Woven Planet (and by extension Toyota) already has satellite-based mapping and the massive amounts of data gleaned from its millions of vehicles on the road today. Carmera brings the dynamic mapping piece as well as its experience in the commercial fleets and safety business to Woven Planet’s portfolio.

“For me, there’s immediate near-term applications that we’ve already worked on as proofs-of-concept with Carmera, and that we haven’t yet announced, but are in the area of safety and automated driving,” Kuffner said, noting that the automaker’s new Lexus LS and Toyota Mirai models will offer an advanced driving assistance technology called Teammate that uses HP maps. “I’m really excited about that generation of products, but for fleets, absolutely. HD maps. There are a lot of applications in fleets.”

What Woven Planet is weaving

Image Credits: Woven Planet/Toyota

The Lyft and now Carmera acquisitions represent a sliver of Woven Planet’s myriad of activities since its formation in January 2021 as the automaker seeks a competitive edge against established rivals and upstarts, particularly on the software front. The entity, which is based in Tokyo and a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp, includes two operating companies, a VC fund called Woven Capital and Woven City, a testing ground for new technologies set in an interconnected smart city prototype. Toyota broke ground in February 2021 at future site of Woven City, the Higashi-Fuji site in Susono City, Japan, at the base of Mount Fuji.

The two operating companies are Woven Alpha and Woven Core, formerly Toyota Research Institute — Advanced Development Inc. Woven Core includes the mapping unit and is focused on automated driving while Woven Alpha is charged with developing new concepts and projects including the prototype city.

Meanwhile, Woven Capital invests in those next-generation mobility innovations. The VC arm kicked off its new $800 million strategic fund in March 2021 by announcing an investment into autonomous delivery vehicle company Nuro. Last month, Woven Capital invested an undisclosed amount into Ridecell, a transportation software startup that has developed a platform designed to help car-sharing, ride-sharing and autonomous technology companies manage their vehicles.

News: Amazon launches its mobile-first Kindle Vella serialized story platform

• July 14, 2021
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As it promised last month, Amazon has launched its serialized fiction Kindle Vella store that lets you unlock episodic, self-published stories via in-app purchases. The new platform is a way for readers to discover new fiction and a new way for authors to generate revenue from the Kindle Direct Publishing service. 

As it promised last month, Amazon has launched its serialized fiction Kindle Vella store that lets you unlock episodic, self-published stories via in-app purchases. The new platform is a way for readers to discover new fiction and a new way for authors to generate revenue from the Kindle Direct Publishing service.

While the name might suggest otherwise, Kindle Vella isn’t available on Amazon’s Kindle e-readers. Rather, you’ll only find it on Amazon.com or the Kindle iOS app (no Android for now). To start with, the service will be limited to US-based authors who publish stories in English.

The serialized stories will run from 600 to 5,000 words per episode, with the first three offered for free. To see subsequent episodes, you’ll need to pay for “tokens,” with prices ranging from $2 for 200 tokens up to $15 for 1,700 tokens. The latter will give you about 34 episodes, though prices per episode depend on the word count — the more words, the more you’ll have to spend.

Authors, meanwhile, will receive 50 percent of the revenue along with bonuses based on engagement with the app’s social media-style features. To that end, readers can follow stories to be notified of new episodes, leave a thumbs up for episodes they like, apply a “Fave” for their favorite story of the week (provided they purchase tokens), and share on Twitter, Facebook and other social media. To boost engagement, authors can speak directly to readers at the end of episodes to “share story insights and behind-the-scenes content,” Amazon wrote.

Since Amazon opened Vella to authors three months ago, “thousands of authors” have published “tens of thousands of Kindle Vella episodes across dozens of genres and microgenre,” Amazon said. Authors appear to be interested as well. “I’ve published close to 30 novels, and I’m enjoying the adventure of writing The Marriage Auction in this new format,” said bestselling author Audrey Carlan in a statement. Whether or not the format takes off now depends on readers — to try it out, you can access Vella here.

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Engadget. 

News: Crypto startup Phantom banks funding from Andreessen Horowitz to scale its multichain wallet

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While retail investors grew more comfortable buying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2021, the decentralized application world still has a lot of work to do when it comes to onboarding a mainstream user base. Phantom is part of a new class of crypto startups looking to build infrastructure that streamlines blockchain-based applications and provides

While retail investors grew more comfortable buying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2021, the decentralized application world still has a lot of work to do when it comes to onboarding a mainstream user base.

Phantom is part of a new class of crypto startups looking to build infrastructure that streamlines blockchain-based applications and provides a more user-friendly UX for navigating the crypto world, something that can make the entire space more approachable to a non-developer audience. Users can download the Phantom wallet to their browsers to interact with applications, swap tokens and collect NFTs.

The crypto wallet startup has banked a $9 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with Variant Fund, Jump Capital, DeFi Alliance, Solana Foundation and Garry Tan also participating. The round, which closed earlier this summer, comes as some venture capital firms embrace a crypto future even as volatility continues to envelop the broader market. Last month, a16z announced a whopping 2.2 billion crypto fund, the firm’s largest vertical-specific investment vehicle ever.

Image via Phantom

The co-founding team of CEO Brandon Millman, CPO Chris Kalani and CEO Francesco Agosti all come aboard from crypto infrastructure startup 0x.

At the moment, Phantom is best-known among the Solana community, where it has become the go-to wallet for applications on that blockchain. The startup’s ambition is to interface with more and more networks, currently building out compatibility with Ethereum and looking to embrace other blockchains, aiming to be a product built for a “multichain world,” Millman tells TechCrunch.

Alongside building out support for other networks, Phantom wants to build more sophisticated DeFi mechanisms right into their wallet, allowing users to stake cryptocurrencies and swap more tokens inside the wallet.

The startup says they have some 40,000 users of their existing wallet product.

Building out a presence on the popular Ethereum blockchain, which already has a handful of popular wallet providers, will be a challenge, but Phantom’s broadest challenge is helping a new breed of crypto-curious users interface with a network of apps that still have a long way to go when it comes to being mainstream-friendly.

“The entire space is kind of stuck in this ‘built by developers for other developers mode,’ ” Millman says. “This bar has been kind of stuck there, and no one is really stepping up to push the bar up higher.”

News: WhatsApp is testing multi-device support that works without the phone

• July 14, 2021
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WhatsApp is finally pushing an improvement to a key feature that even the Facebook-owned instant messaging service acknowledges has been a top request from users for years. On Wednesday, WhatsApp said it is rolling out a limited public beta test for its improved multi-device capability. The update enables WhatsApp users for the first time to

WhatsApp is finally pushing an improvement to a key feature that even the Facebook-owned instant messaging service acknowledges has been a top request from users for years.

On Wednesday, WhatsApp said it is rolling out a limited public beta test for its improved multi-device capability.

The update enables WhatsApp users for the first time to use the service on up to four non-phone devices without having the registered phone switched on or otherwise connected to the internet. A WhatsApp spokesperson told TechCrunch that this chain of multiple devices can’t have another phone in it.

“Each companion device will connect to your WhatsApp independently,” said the messaging app in a post.

To be clear, WhatsApp, which is used by over 2 billion users globally, already provides support for multiple-device use. A user can simultaneously access the service, for instance, from a web browser or a desktop app on their computer. But the multi-device support flow currently requires the phone to be connected to the internet.

In WhatsApp’s own words:

“By requiring the phone to perform all operations, companion devices are slower and frequently get disconnected — especially when the phone has a poor connection, its battery is running low, or the application process gets killed by the phone’s OS. It also allows for only a single companion device to be operative at a time, meaning people can’t be on a call in Portal while checking their messages on their PC, for example.

The new WhatsApp multi-device architecture removes these hurdles, no longer requiring a smartphone to be the source of truth while still keeping user data seamlessly and securely synchronized and private.”

In a whitepaper published today (PDF), WhatsApp has outlined how this feature works, which gives an insight into why it took so long to ship.

The firm says it has developed new technologies that ensure that even on multiple-devices, messages sync while maintaining end-to-end encryption, a feat that is currently rare in the market.

Image: WhatsApp

“To achieve this, we had to rethink WhatsApp’s architecture and design new systems to enable a standalone multi-device experience while preserving privacy and end-to-end encryption,” the company wrote. “Each message is individually encrypted using the established pairwise encryption session with each device. Messages are not stored on the server after they are delivered.”

The feature also doesn’t change how WhatsApp uses cloud backups for users, a spokesperson said. “The mechanism we use to synchronize messages and other app data across a user’s devices is independent from our cloud backups,” the spokesperson added, pointing to the whitepaper that describes the protocol in more detail.

WhatsApp doesn’t have a specific date for when it plans to roll out this feature to all users. Instead, the firm told us that it is initially rolling out this feature to its existing beta users. Over the coming months, it plans to start adding it as an opt-in beta feature for a small number of users on stable versions of the app, as well.

The aforementioned feature is one of many that WhatsApp is currently developing. WhatsApp is working on a dedicated app for the iPad as well as expand on the last year’s disappearing mode feature. The app, which currently allows users to set a seven-day timer on messages, plans to expand this feature to let users share pictures and videos that can only be viewed once.

News: SF’s Off the Grid food truck festival refocuses on emergency response and services

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Off the Grid is a mainstay of the San Francisco culinary scene. The event company, founded by Matt Cohen in 2010, created neighborhood pop-up festivals centered around entrepreneurial food trucks. It was part of the vanguard in the food truck movement, designed to open a path to restaurants for a new generation of ambitious and

Off the Grid is a mainstay of the San Francisco culinary scene. The event company, founded by Matt Cohen in 2010, created neighborhood pop-up festivals centered around entrepreneurial food trucks. It was part of the vanguard in the food truck movement, designed to open a path to restaurants for a new generation of ambitious and diverse chefs with inventive ideas around food and the people who enjoy it.

Off the Grid’s food festival in Fort Mason, San Francisco. Image Credits: Off the Grid

Over the years, the festivals grew to extreme popularity (I remember more than once trying to go and realizing that others have way more patience to wait in line than I do), and Off the Grid itself increasingly expanded into catering for events. “[I] built my career on the idea that food is a source of comfort at all different times,” Cohen said.

Well, we do live in different times, don’t we?

The first inklings of a change for the company started back in 2017, when wildfires like those in Sonoma and Napa swept across California. Frontline firefighters, operating at times in remote areas of the state, were often forced to eat what the military dubs MREs or Meals Ready-to-Eat.

Cohen and his team saw an opportunity. “For a long time in emergency response, people thought about food as calories, not necessarily about allowing local food businesses to sustain themselves,” he said. He noted that MREs are almost universally bland, and that the meals are typically ordered in bulk from outside the state. Could Off the Grid connect the dots by having local restauranteurs cook meals while Off the Grid supplied the logistics to get them to the frontlines?

Those 2017 fires were the first time the company forayed into helping first responders and victims, and Off the Grid along with its restauranteurs supplied an estimated 20,000 people with meals that year. “[We] got an understanding of the market landscape in emergency response,” he said.

Those first trials were accelerated dramatically in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across California and the rest of the world. Suddenly, delivered meals were the only means for restaurants to connect to their communities, and the frontlines were no longer in the foothills where the fires were, but everywhere all the time.

Off the Grid worked with its restaurant partners to scale up food delivery to frontline workers and victims during the pandemic and wildfire season last year. Image Credits: Off the Grid

Off the Grid doubled down on its pivot, seeing an opportunity to provide solace to people at a time of terrible tragedy. “People don’t think of food being delivered during emergencies as delicious, [since] the reality is that people are happy to just have anything to eat,” Cohen said. “But then, delicious food can be a real comfort when the rest of their lives are disrupted.” Over the course of the pandemic, Off the Grid facilitated the delivery of 1.3 million meals with a “rotating list of options, so people can constantly be delighted,” targeting customers ranging from temporary shelters to immunocompromised consumers residing at home.

In addition to giving customers delectable options, the model also helped sustain the local food scene that Off the Grid had spent years growing through its programs. Cohen said the company sees these links as a key tool for building resilient communities, particularly as climate change continues to ravage California and much of the rest of the world.

Last year’s punctuated growth forced the startup to scale up quickly. Food safety and health regulations vary from county to county, which meant that as it delivered meals throughout the greater Bay Area and the rest of California, Off the Grid had to develop scalable processes to handle the paperwork and logistics. That technology is now forming the basis for the next phase of its business as Off the Grid enters its second decade in operation.

“[There are a lot of] unique aspects of food service in particular, licensing, and permitting, and insurance, and the less sexy things that allows us to operate,” Cohen said. With those logistics increasingly systematized, 2021 is going to be an even more ambitious year for the company.

Off the Grid CEO and founder Matt Cohen. Image Credits: Off the Grid

“We actually have been working with the state and the Red Cross to identify 39 counties in the state of California that are at relatively high risk for fire danger, and on-board 200 restaurants … so that in the event there is a fire, we can access them and activate them,” he said. Today, roughly half the company is focused on its emergency response programs.

That doesn’t mean its food festivals will go away. It has reopened its smaller venues in places like Levi’s Plaza near SF’s Coit Tower in North Beach, and it intends to restart its larger festivals as safety guidelines allow. But emergency response is a new, enduring mission for this mission-oriented company. “We’re definitely going to continue to do this as long as there is a need,” Cohen said.

News: Facebook will lure creators with $1 billion in payments

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Facebook just announced plans to pay content creators more than $1 billion by the end of next year through new bonus programs designed to keep creatives plugged into its app ecosystem. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg first announced the new funding to “reward creators for great content” on his Facebook page. The company will

Facebook just announced plans to pay content creators more than $1 billion by the end of next year through new bonus programs designed to keep creatives plugged into its app ecosystem. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg first announced the new funding to “reward creators for great content” on his Facebook page.

The company will pay creators through a series of new bonus initiatives across Facebook and Instagram which are “seasonal, evolving and expanding over time.” The bonus programs will have a dedicated hub within the Instagram app later this summer and in the Facebook app later this year.

The company will offer the first new bonuses to creators making videos on Facebook with in-stream ads enabled. Facebook is also expanding bonuses through its Stars system, which invites viewers to send streamers tips in exchange for fan perks. Creators making videos or livestreaming games will be eligible for monthly bonuses based on how many viewers send them payments via Stars through October.

Instagram will introduce its own bonuses, which will be invite-only to begin with. Within the next few weeks, U.S. creators can collect a one-time bonus for enabling IGTV ads. Other bonuses will reward creators for making Reels, Instagram’s answer to TikTok’s short-form video success, and for hitting certain milestones in Instagram Live.

Facebook’s foray into creator payments is just the latest effort to jump-start TikTok competitor products with cold hard cash. Snapchat hands out $1 million each day to the most popular videos in its short-form video product Spotlight. YouTube has its own $100 million fund for YouTube Shorts, the company’s own TikTok clone.

TikTok itself launched a $200 million creator fund last year, though the app doesn’t seem to have much to worry about (yet, anyway). According to data from SensorTower, TikTok just surpassed 3 billion global downloads. The only other apps to have crossed that milestone are WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook and Instagram — all owned by Facebook.

News: Facebook is shook, asks for removal of FTC Chair Khan from antitrust cases against it

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Facebook has joined Amazon in a show of alarm at the sudden rise of antitrust hawk Lina Khan to the position of FTC Chair by asking that she be recused from all decisions relating to the company. The argument, more or less identical to Amazon’s, is that before her appointment, Khan was too outspoken about

Facebook has joined Amazon in a show of alarm at the sudden rise of antitrust hawk Lina Khan to the position of FTC Chair by asking that she be recused from all decisions relating to the company. The argument, more or less identical to Amazon’s, is that before her appointment, Khan was too outspoken about her professional opinion that companies like these are in violation of antitrust rules.

In a letter filed with the FTC and obtained by the WSJ, which the agency could not provide and declined to comment on, Facebook explained that Khan’s last few years of academic publications and articles in other media amount to cause for recusal from decisions about the company. (I have asked Facebook for a copy of the petition and will update this post if I receive it.)

“Chair Khan has consistently made public statements not only accusing Facebook of conduct that merits disapproval but specifically expressing her belief that the conduct meets the elements of an antitrust offense. When a new commissioner has already drawn factual and legal conclusions and deemed the target a lawbreaker, due process requires that individual to recuse herself,” reads the petition.

Neither the FTC nor Khan in any other capacity have responded to the recusal requests from Facebook and Amazon. She did note in her nomination proceeding that recusal requests like these do happen, and are resolved on a case-by-case basis (unlike automatic recusals for things like financial or personal interest). Perhaps even now she is meeting with the ethics experts at the agency.

Khan has, however, certainly made her policy positions known in numerous articles and papers, many of which have argued that antitrust regulators have been highly conservative in their interpretation and deployment of their legal powers, and equally permissive in their oversight of the current crop of enormous tech companies. Things like acquiring competitors, artificially lowering prices to pressure a market, or misrepresenting the collection and use of customer data have gone either unchallenged or minimally punished.

In particular she acted as counsel for the House’s Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets, an antitrust report issued last fall. Amazon and Facebook lean on cases from 1966 and 1970 where an FTC Commissioner was recused for “prejudgment” of a case during a Congressional investigation in which he participated. It’s a promising hook to hang a case on to be sure, but the circumstances are by no means equivalent. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that no case or even specific allegations have been prejudged, only the general idea that Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon all either have monopolies or otherwise possess market power. (They didn’t care much when the report was issued.)

The main finding of the House report, in fact, was arguably that there could be no legal case because existing laws and regulations are insufficient. Certainly Khan has shouted this from the rooftops for some years now — but the conclusion is a legislative matter, not an FTC one. It would be mighty difficult for Khan to have prejudged an antitrust case predicated on laws that haven’t yet been written.

Khan’s FTC has suffered an early setback on her watch though not of her making in the dismissal of some complaints in the agency’s current antitrust case against Facebook. It was for lack of evidence that the company exerts monopoly control over social media that the judge told the FTC to come back and try again. Perhaps Khan intends to remedy that with a supplemented filing, or perhaps she will take the loss and muster her forces for another go in a year or two — but either way it is probably best to resolve the question of her alleged “prejudgment” before that decision is announced. (The FTC declined to speculate as to whether the recusal request would affect the current proceedings.)

But the agency also has explicit backing from the White House in the form of President Biden’s request that it prioritize “dominant internet platforms, with particular attention to the acquisition of nascent competitors, serial mergers, the accumulation of data, competition by ‘free’ products, and the effect on user privacy.” So Khan probably isn’t feeling the sting of the aforementioned legal challenge.

The petitions filed by Amazon and Facebook have near-zero risk for the companies and an outside chance at provoking a recusal, so it makes sense strategically to file them. They also provide breadcrumbs later for their inevitable objections to the FTC’s (under Khan, equally inevitable) allegations of monopolistic practices. The legal repercussions are hard to predict but it is usually better to have a complaint on the table already rather than bring it out late in the process.

Given Chair Khan’s position that the FTC itself needs to be overhauled and empowered in order to bring actions like this against companies like Facebook, it seems clear that all these are merely the opening gambits in a long, long game.