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UK eyeing switch to Apple-Google API for coronavirus contacts tracing — report

Published May 7, 2020

The UK may be rethinking its decision to shun Apple and Google’s API for its national coronavirus contacts tracing app, according to the Financial Times, which reported yesterday that the government is paying an IT supplier to investigate whether it can integrate the tech giants’ approach after all.

As we’ve reported before coronavirus contacts tracing apps are a new technology which aims to repurpose smartphones’ Bluetooth signals and device proximity to try to estimate individuals’ infection risk.

The UK’s forthcoming app, called NHS COVID-19, has faced controversy because it’s being designed to use a centralized app architecture. This means developers are having to come up with workarounds for platform limitations on background access to Bluetooth as the Apple-Google cross-platform API only works with decentralized systems.

The choice of a centralized app architecture has also raised concerns about the impact of such an unprecedented state data grab on citizens’ privacy and human rights, and the risk of state ‘mission creep‘.

The UK also looks increasingly isolated in its choice in Europe after the German government opted to switch to a decentralized model, joining several other European countries that have said they will opt for a p2p approach, including Estonia, Ireland and Switzerland.

In the region, France remains the other major backer of a centralized system for its forthcoming coronavirus contacts tracing app, StopCovid.

Apple and Google, meanwhile, are collaborating on a so-called “exposure notification” API for national coronavirus contacts tracing apps. The API is slated to launch this month and is designed to remove restrictions that could interfere with how contact events are logged. However it’s only available for apps that don’t hold users’ personal data on central servers and prohibits location tracking, with the pair emphasizing that their system is designed to put privacy at the core.

Yesterday the FT reported that NHSX, the digital transformation branch of UK’s National Health Service, has awarded a £3.8M contract to the London office of Zuhlke Engineering, a Switzerland-based IT development firm which was involved in developing the initial version of the NHS COVID-19 app.

The contract includes a requirement to “investigate the complexity, performance and feasibility of implementing native Apple and Google contact tracing APIs within the existing proximity mobile application and platform”, per the newspaper’s report.

The work is also described as a “two week timeboxed technical spike”, which the FT suggests means it’s still at a preliminary phase — thought it also notes the contract includes a deadline of mid-May.

The contracted work was due to begin yesterday, per the report.

We’ve reached out to Zuhlke for comment. Its website describes the company as “a strong solutions partner” that’s focused on projects related to digital product delivery; cloud migration; scaling digital platforms; and the Internet of Things.

We also put questions arising from the FT report to NHSX.

At the time of writing the unit had not responded but yesterday a spokesperson told the newspaper: “We’ve been working with Apple and Google throughout the app’s development and it’s quite right and normal to continue to refine the app.”

The specific technical issue that appears to be causing concern relates to a workaround the developers have devised to try to circumvent platform limitations on Bluetooth that’s intended to wake up phones when the app itself is not being actively used in order that the proximity handshakes can still be carried out (and contacts events properly logged).

Thing is, if any of the devices fail to wake up and emit their identifiers so other nearby devices can log their presence there will be gaps in the data. Which, in plainer language, means the app might miss some close encounters between users — and therefore fail to notify some people of potential infection risk.

Recent reports have suggested the NHSX workaround has a particular problem with iPhones not being able to wake up other iPhones. And while Google’s Android OS is the more dominant platform in the UK (running on circa ~60% of smartphones, per Kantar) there will still be plenty of instances of two or more iPhone users passing near each other. So if their apps fail to wake up they won’t exchange data and those encounters won’t be logged.

On this, the FT quotes one person familiar with the NHS testing process who told it the app was able to work in the background in most cases, except when two iPhones were locked and left unused for around 30 minutes, and without any Android devices coming within 60m of the devices. The source also told it that bringing an Android device running the app close to the iPhone would “wake up” its Bluetooth connection.

Clearly, the government having to tell everyone in the UK to use an Android smartphone not an iPhone wouldn’t be a particularly palatable political message.

This is effectively a form of Android Herd Immunity: for the good of Britain, vaccinate your friends by giving them Androids!

— Michael Veale (@mikarv) May 5, 2020

One source with information about the NHSX testing process told us the unit has this week been asking IT suppliers for facilities or input on testing environments with “50-100 Bluetooth devices of mixed origin”, to help with challenges in testing the Bluetooth exchanges — which raises questions about how extensively this core functionality has been tested up to now. (Again, we’ve put questions to the NHSX about testing and will update this report with any response.)

Work on planning and developing the NHS COVID-19 app began March 7, according to evidence given to a UK parliamentary committee by the NHSX CEO’s, Matthew Gould, last month.

Gould has also previously suggested that the app could be “technically” ready to launch in as little as two or three weeks time from now. While a limited geographical trial of the app kicked off this week in the Isle of Wight. Prior to that, an alpha version of the app was tested at an RAF base involving staff carrying out simulations of people going shopping, per a BBC report last month.

Gould faced questions over the choice of centralized vs decentralized app architecture from the human rights committee earlier this week. He suggested then that the government is not “locked” to the choice — telling the committee: “We are constantly reassessing which approach is the right one — and if it becomes clear that the balance of advantage lies in a different approach then we will take that different approach. We’re not irredeemably wedded to one approach; if we need to shift then we will… It’s a very pragmatic decision about what approach is likely to get the results that we need to get.”

However it’s unclear how quickly such a major change to app architecture could be implemented, given centralized vs decentralized systems work in very different ways.

Additionally, such a big shift — more than two months into the NHSX’s project — seems, at such a late stage, as if it would be more closely characterized as a rebuild, rather than a little finessing (as suggested by the NHSX spokesperson’s remark to the FT vis-a-vis ‘refining’ the app).

In related news today, Reuters reports that Colombia has pulled its own coronavirus contacts tracing app after experiencing glitches and inaccuracies. The app had used alternative technology to power contacts logging via Bluetooth and wi-fi. A government official told the news agency it aims to rebuild the system and may now use the Apple-Google API.

Australia has also reported Bluetooth related problems with its national coronavirus app. And has also been reported to be moving towards adopting the Apple-Google API.

While, Singapore, the first country to launch a Bluetooth app for coronavirus contacts tracing, was also the first to run into technical hitches related to platform limits on background access — likely contributing to low download rates for the app (reportedly below 20%).

How will digital media survive the ad crash?

Published May 6, 2020

When I first met Bustle Digital Group’s Jason Wagenheim, it was right as New York City was beginning to go into lockdown. The BDG offices were empty thanks to the company’s newly instituted work-from-home policy, but it still seemed reasonable to meet in-person to learn more about BDG’s broader vision.

At the time, Wagenheim — a former Fusion and Condé Nast executive who joined BDG as chief revenue officer before becoming president in February — acknowledged that we were entering a period of uncertainty, but he sounded a note of cautious optimism for the year ahead.

Since then, of course, things have been pretty rough for the digital media industry (along with the rest of the world), with a rapid reduction in ad spending leading to layoffs, furloughs and pay cuts. BDG (which owns properties like Elite Daily, Input, Inverse, Nylon and Bustle itself) had to make its share of cuts, laying off two dozen employees, including the entire staff of The Outline.

And indeed, when I checked back in with Wagenheim, he told me that he’s anticipating a 35% decline in ad revenue for this quarter. And where he’d once hoped BDG would reach $120 or $125 million in ad revenue this year, he’s now trying to figure out “what does our company look like at $75 or $90 million?”

At the same time, he insisted that executives were determined not to completely dismantle the businesses they’d built, and to be prepared whenever advertising does come back.

We also discussed how Wagenheim handled the layoffs, how the company is reinventing its events sponsorship business and the trends he’s seeing in the ad spending that remains. You can read an edited and condensed version of our conversation below.

TechCrunch: We should probably just start with the elephant in the room, which is that you guys had to make some cuts recently. You were hardly the only ones, but do you want to talk about the thought process behind them?

Jason Wagenheim: Yeah, we ended up having to say goodbye to about 7% of our team, and we had salary reductions to the tune of 18% company-wide for those that made over $70,000. And then we had 30% pay cuts for executives.

You’ve read about all this, I’m sure. It was a really, really hard decision. We spent two weeks in planning, dozens of spreadsheets, negotiating with our investors on a plan that would keep the company moving forward, but [had to] be very sober to the reality of what was happening around us. But also most importantly for us, for our executive team, we weren’t about to disassemble the company that we spent the last 12 to 18 months building.

Enterprise companies find MLOps critical for reliability and performance

Published May 6, 2020

Rish Joshi
Contributor

Rish is an entrepreneur and investor. Previously, he was a VC at Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), co-founded a fintech startup building an analytics platform for SEC filings and worked on deep-learning research as a graduate student in computer science at MIT.

The rise of MLOps

Equinix just recorded its 69th straight positive quarter

Published May 6, 2020

There’s something to be said for consistency through good times and bad, and one company that has had a staggeringly consistent track record is international data center vendor, Equinix. It just recorded its 69th straight positive quarter, according to the company.

That’s an astonishing record, and covers over 17 years of positive returns. That means this streak goes back to 2003. Not too shabby.

The company had a decent quarter, too. Even in the middle of an economic mess, it was still up 6% YoY to $1.445 billion and up 2% over last quarter. The company runs data centers where companies can rent space for their servers. Equinix handles all of the infrastructure providing racks, wiring and cooling — and customers can purchase as many racks as they need.

If you’re managing your own servers for even part of your workload, it can be much more cost-effective to rent space from a vendor like Equinix than trying to run a facility on your own.

Among its new customers this quarter are Zoom, which is buying capacity all over the place, having also announced a partnership with Oracle earlier this month, and TikTok. Both of those companies deal in video and require lots of different types of resources to keep things running.

This report comes against a backdrop of a huge increase in resource demand for certain sectors like streaming video and video conferencing, with millions of people working and studying at home or looking for distractions.

And if you’re wondering if they can keep it going, they believe they can. Their guidance calls for 2020 revenue of $5.877-$5.985 billion, a 6-8% increase over the previous year.

You could call them the anti-IBM. At one point Big Blue recorded 22 straight quarters of declining revenue in an ignominious streak that stretched from 2012 to 2018 before it found a way to stop the bleeding.

When you consider that Equnix’s streak includes the period of 2008-2010, the last time the economy hit the skids, it makes the record even more impressive, and certainly one worth pointing out.

Equinix completes $3.6 billion deal to buy 29 data centers from Verizon

Publicist launches its marketplace for freelance PR and marketing

Published May 6, 2020

Founder and CEO Lara Vandenberg told me she created Publicist to support the ways in which the communications and marketing industry is changing — changes that are only accelerating due to COVID-19.

Vandenberg was previously senior vice president of communications and marketing at Knotch, and she told me, “More companies now are being better served by this flexible support, rather than being tied to these costly and rigid agency retainers.”

And at the same time, Vandenberg said there’s more freelance talent looking for work.

“As we’ve seen, more brands are continuing to downsize their internal teams, so a lot of people coming to the platform have either been furloughed or laid off,” she said. “This is really, really premium talent. I always believed that the industry was moving to project-based work.”

So she built an early version of Publicist while at Knotch, then left to focus on it full time. She launched a beta test earlier this year before the full launch this week.

Image Credits: Publicist

The goal is to help businesses find and hire freelancers for work like content creation, crisis communications, developing a go-to-market strategy or even hiring an interim CMO. Vandenberg said Publicist vets all the talent on the platform, and that those freelancers have worked for brands like Apple, Nike, Microsoft, IBM, Away, Glossier, Casper and Google.

“We have 350 skills on the platform, and I would say only about 10% of those are PR-related,” she added.

And Publicist isn’t just for establishing the initial connection between company and freelancer. It’s designed to enable the full collaboration process, with tools like video chat and screensharing — then the startup takes a 20% commission on payments.

Publicist is starting in North America, with plans to expand globally. Vandenberg suggested that some jobs (like crisis comms) probably require someone with local, on-the-ground knowledge, while others (like Amazon or Shopify marketing) are more geography agnostic.

Sending severed heads, and even more PR DON’Ts

Your iPhone will soon be able to tell 911 about your medical conditions and allergies

Published May 6, 2020

Got something in your medical history that first responders should know about if you call 911? Things like known drug allergies, or the medications you’re on?

The iPhone and Apple Watch will soon be able to share this information with first responders automatically (if you opt to let it do so).

When a user with this feature enabled calls 911, Apple will ping their location to determine if the local 911 dispatch supports “Enhanced Emergency Data” — a service the company first started building out a few years back to tell emergency services where you’re calling from. If it does, your Medical ID info (as set up in your Health app) will be shared with emergency services accordingly.

It’ll also work with the Apple Watch’s Fall Detection feature, which can automatically call 911 if it detects that the wearer has fallen and is now immobile.

The feature was rolled into the beta build of iOS 13.5 this morning, and Apple says it should ship to everyone in “the coming weeks.”

This is a super logical feature, and one that’ll almost certainly save lives. People are rarely in the calmest state when calling 911, and most people wouldn’t think to say “Oh, and hey by the way, I have an allergy to [medication here]” if they’re worried they’re about to pass out — and that’s something first responders really should know.

EA games on PS4 and Xbox One could be ‘upgraded free’ to next-gen console versions

Published May 6, 2020

2020 and 2021 will be one of the periodic transitional eras in gaming as Sony and Microsoft debut their shiny new consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. To ease the process (and spur adoption of the next generation), EA may make its upcoming titles free to “upgrade” to your chosen console.

On an earnings call last night, EA COO Blake Jorgensen at the end of his remarks noted a possible effect on revenue “from the games we are launching for the current generation of consoles that can also be upgraded free for the next generation.”

EA declined to comment on the comment, but the meaning seems obvious enough. It likely refers to “cross-gen” games that will appear on both existing consoles and those set to debut later in the year. If you buy the next, say, “Battlefield” game on PlayStation 4, you will have the option to transfer it somehow to the PlayStation 5.

PlayStation 5’s new DualSense controller is a sleek and futuristic gaming accessory

Exactly how this would work is not clear — there will almost certainly be some rigmarole involving deactivating the license on your old copy — but the effect is a positive and consumer-friendly one. People can buy a game, from EA anyway, safe in the knowledge that they can continue to play it even if they buy a new console. That hasn’t been the case, in general, before.

In fact, the whole transition is looking to be a relatively easy one: The new consoles will be backward-compatible with many games from the previous generation; services like online access and monthly free games will cross over; some hardware and accessories will be shared; built-in streaming options mean improved portability.

EA’s apparent commitment to cross-gen upgrades is among the first, though some publishers and developers have floated the idea or declared support for it, pending approval from the console makers themselves. The confirmation could trigger an avalanche of announcements as others hurry to assure gamers that they, too, will provide this option.

Sony and Microsoft are the ones left holding the bag here: While a sale is a sale for EA or Ubisoft, the console makers are under tremendous pressure to show their console launches are successful. (Nintendo, as usual, is pursuing its own agenda independent from the cadence of its rivals.)

Part of that strategy is high-profile next-gen exclusives that people save up to buy alongside the new consoles, providing revenue spikes and platform lock-ins. When a large amount of those sales occur earlier in the year, and technically for the previous consoles, it’s not a good look.

These policies have a way of evolving right up to and beyond the moment of release. Sony clowned so devastatingly on Microsoft’s confusing and limited game transfer policies at E3 2013, the outset of this console generation, that it affected the whole zeitgeist, boosting PS4 sales and forcing Microsoft to reconsider. (You can see me in the video of it; I’ve rarely heard a crowd so excited about something.)

It’s better to err on the side of liberality, it turns out. EA, which has routinely erred in the other direction over the last few years, hopes perhaps to curry favor in advance of a gaming market opening up in new directions. We’ll see if other companies follow suit.

More debt, improving margins: How startups are retooling in the COVID-19 era

Published May 6, 2020

A new data set from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) details how startups are reacting to the post-unicorn era as COVID-19-related disruptions upset the global economy and remake the risk tolerance of private investors.

What SVB’s new report shows is unsurprising: venture capital deal volumes are falling, startups are tapping existing debt capacities to add cash to balances while they still can and some upstart firms are curtailing spend to reduce unprofitability. The last data point comes via the lens of startups that recently raised, making the data more a snapshot of what companies that are successfully attracting capital may have accomplished with regard to improving profitability — the directional shifts are material regardless of that particular nuance.

Let’s briefly examine what the data says and what it tells us about the state of the startup market.

Spending less, borrowing more

Venture capitalists are pulling back, SVB data indicates. A chart from its Q2 markets report notes that the “SVB Deal Activity Index” had fallen from a rating of 160 in early March to just over 70 by mid-to-late-April. That staggering decline means fewer rounds are getting done and that there is less capital going into startups of all sizes.

Confluent introduces scale on demand for Apache Kafka cloud customers

Published May 6, 2020

We find ourselves in a time when certain businesses are being asked to scale to levels they never imagined. Sometimes that increased usage comes in bursts, which means you don’t want to pay for permanent extra capacity you might not always need. Today, Confluent introduced a new scale-on-demand feature for its Apache Kafka cloud service that will scale up and down as needed, automatically.

Confluent CEO Jay Kreps says that elasticity is arguably one of the most important features of cloud computing, and this ability to scale up and down is one of the primary factors that has attracted organizations to the cloud. By automating that capability, they give DevOps one less major thing to worry about.

“This new functionality allows users to dynamically scale Kafka and the other key ecosystem components like KSQL and Kafka Connect. This is a key missing capability that no other service provides,” Kreps explained.

He points out that this is particularly relevant right now with people working at home. Systems are being taxed more than perhaps ever before, and this automated elasticity is going to come in handy, making it more cost-effective and efficient than was previously possible.

“These capabilities let customers add capacity as they need it, or scale down to save money, all without having to pre-plan in advance,” he said.

The new elasticity feature in Confluent is part of a series of updates to the platform, known as Project Metamorphosis, that Confluent is planning to roll out throughout this year on a regular basis.

“Through the rest of the year we’ll be doing a sequence of releases that bring the capabilities of modern cloud data systems to the Kafka ecosystem in Confluent Cloud. We’ll be announcing one major capability each month, starting with elasticity,” he said.

Kreps first announced Metamorphosis last month when the company also announced a massive $250 million funding round on a $4.5 billion valuation. In spite of the current economic situation, driven by the ongoing pandemic, Confluent plans to continue to build out the product, as today’s announcement attests.

Confluent lands another big round with $250M Series E on $4.5B valuation

With funding from Indie.vc, ReadySet is scaling to meet the demands of a changing workplace

Published May 6, 2020

ReadySet, a diversity, equity and inclusion startup led by Project Include founding member Y-Vonne Hutchinson, has raised its first, and perhaps last, round of funding from Indie.vc.

“We were lucky enough to close our round right as the coronavirus was hitting and then shifted our business to doing remote stuff that offered connection,” Hutchinson told TechCrunch.

For the last five years, ReadySet has been sustaining itself off of revenue, and in the last year saw about $1 million in annual revenue. ReadySet makes money by offering consulting services to companies looking to create more inclusive workplaces and cultures. ReadySet has worked with companies like Salesforce, Airbnb, Amazon, GitHub, UCSF Health, Mailchimp, Medium and many others.

“We’ve been profitable the entire time we’ve been in business,” Hutchinson said. “But we wanted to be able to maximize our impact beyond in-person training services and doing stuff that felt a little more like product development that didn’t necessitate immediate revenue.”

ReadySet decided to take funding from Indie.vc because of the firm’s focus on startups that are profit-driven, she said. She also “didn’t want to give up a huge chunk of ownership in a firm I built from scratch.”

Indie.vc doesn’t take any equity upfront. If a startup in its portfolio raises additional money or sells, Indie.vc converts its investment to equity at a percentage decided on by the company. If the company never sells or never raises another round, Indie.vc gets a share of the company’s revenue until the firm makes 5x its investment.

“They weren’t interested in taking a big chunk of the business but were instead interested in helping us get more profitable,” she said. “For me, as a founder that has not been in the VC space, it’s been hard to be seen as a real entrepreneur.”

Indie.vc aims to be the last outside financing founders ever need to take. For Hutchinson, she said that could be the case.

“I don’t want to be the kind of founder that chases the next round,” she said. “I want to smartly leverage the funding and continue our profitability and do it at scale. I think some founders get stuck doing that and then don’t focus on the product.”

In light of these trying times amid the COVID-19 pandemic, ReadySet is investing more heavily in remote training offerings.

“We’re really sort of looking for ways we can resource companies trying to rethink digital interaction,” she said. “I also think a lot of people or some people think this is a blip on the radar and we’ll go back to normal. We don’t think that is necessarily going to happen.”

Despite these rocky times where many tech companies are laying off staff members and putting some on furlough, Hutchinson said some companies have doubled down on what they’re doing in terms of workplace culture.

In past recessions, where diversity, equity and inclusion has been seen as a ” ‘nice to have,’ there is an existential threat that has changed the way we live and the way we have to show up at work,” Hutchinson said.

People are now isolated or needing to take care of family, she says. Perhaps they’re drinking more and/or working through grief, loss and death — all of which are traumatic, she said.

“All of those issues actually implicate DE&I,” Hutchinson said. “We’re used to siloing it, but in reality, DE&I speaks to how people show up, how they feel included, how we support people and now, more than ever, that’s really important.”

Hutchinson says her clients are asking her more about mental health, belonging, childcare and bringing compassion into these trying times.

“A lot of tech companies don’t necessarily have strong management cultures,” she said. “Those gaps are now becoming really obvious to people. I think we’re all in a place where we’re trying to figure out how we adjust to what’s going on now. It’s about so much more than work right now. I would encourage companies, even if they don’t consider that to be DE&I, to think about how they’re treating their employees.”