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Sony finally unveils PlayStation 5 details

Published March 18, 2020

The PlayStation 5 warranted little more than a mention when it was introduced at CES back in January. Sony was planning a much bigger reveal in a few weeks at GDC in SF, but, well, COVID-19 happened. So here we are with a live-streamed version of the event, offering far and away the deepest dive into the next-gen console.

Lead system architect Mark Cerny kicked off a low key presentation to a small gathering of people — a direct response to on-going social distancing concerns. The event did, indeed go deep, at Cerny discussed how Sony enabled the 5GB/s SSD — the most requested new feature from developers. The system is said to potentially be nearly 100x faster than the PS4’s I/O.

PlayStation 5 announced for holidays 2020

The company also dumped a number of technical details for the forthcoming system, beginning to bring the PS5 up to speed with the Xbox Series X. Along with the new ultra-high-speed SDD, the system will sport a custom AMD GPU with ray tracing, and, as is Sony’s wont, 3D audio, for an improved multimedia home entertainment offering. As with the Xbox, there will be backwards compatibility — specifically with the PS4.

The CPU is an AMD’s Zen 2, with eight cores at 3.5GHz, while the GPU is based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture. The later offers 10.28 teraflops of compute power, by way of 36 CUs. There’s 16GB of memory on board, coupled with 825GB of solid state storage. Also on board is the new boost feature, designed to better regulate power consumption and heat on the system.

Per Cerny, rather than focusing on the temperature itself, the system monitors “the activities that the GPU and CPU are performing and set the frequencies on that basis .” The specifics of system cooling is one of several features the company is promising to reveal in further detail in a future “teardown” of the system.

3D audio was covered in the “Finding New Dreams” segment. Cerny pointed out that audio is often a bit of an afterthought on systems that are focused on graphics first. He added that it certainly applied to the PS4. The 5, meanwhile, is focused on bringing a version of PSVR’s immersive audio to the new system, adding things like presence and locality to the console. The company promises to offer much improved virtual surround sound, even on less advanced home stereo systems and headphones.

As with the new Xbox, the system is due out at the end of the year. Clearly Sony is just scratching the surface here. There’s still plenty of stuff left to announce between now and the holidays. Game play, anyone?

Watch Sony unveil the PlayStation 5 live right here

Published March 18, 2020

A couple of days after Microsoft unveiled a ton of info about the Xbox Series X, Sony is about to do the exact same thing in a live video. Sony is hosting a live broadcast about the PlayStation 5 today at 9 AM PT, 12 PM ET, 4 PM GMT.

Lead system architect Mark Cerny will unveil the console’s architecture and what it means for both developers and gamers. We already know that the PlayStation 5 will be launched in late 2020. It’ll feature an eight-core AMD CPU, a custom AMD GPU with ray-tracing support and SSD storage.

The controller will support haptic feedback and adaptive triggers depending on what you’re doing in the game. But many details are still missing. Today’s announcement should answer some questions.

Google’s Advanced Protection program for high-risk users now includes malware protection

Published March 18, 2020

Google is expanding the feature set for its Advanced Protection Program, a security offering that helps safeguard Google Accounts of those at risk for targeted attacks — like politicians, journalists, activists, business leaders and others. The program already provides an increased level of protection for these accounts by limiting access to data, blocking fraudulent account access, supporting the use of physical security keys and more. Today, Google is adding new malware protections to the program, as well.

For starters, those enrolled in the Advanced Protection Program will have Google Play Protect automatically enabled. This is Google’s built-in malware protection for Android that’s currently used to scan and verify 100 billion apps per day, Google notes. The system uses machine learning to automatically scan users’ devices and apps to check for harmful behavior and potential security issues. Now, this will be enabled for Advanced Protection Program members and will not be able to be shut off.

The program will also now limit users’ ability to install apps from outside the Play Store, where apps are now scanned for malware before approval. Those from outside the store can present a greater risk. Google will now prevent the download of non-Play Store apps on any devices enrolled in the Advanced Protection Program, with a few exceptions. Users will be able to install non-Play Store apps through other third-party app stores that may have shipped on your device from the device manufacturer. Others can be installed through the developer tool Android Debug Bridge. However, Google says non-Play Store apps that have already been installed won’t be removed and can continue to be updated.

Google launched its Advanced Protection Program in fall 2017, as an opt-in option for those who believe they’re at increased risk of online attacks. The program focuses on defending against phishing, locking down malicious apps, and fending off hackers. The trade-off is reduced convenience as there are additional steps to take during authentication and more limitations on what can be done. But the result is a safer, and free, way to increase the security of your account and device.

The new added protections will roll out gradually to accounts enrolled in the Advanced Protection Program on Android devices, to be later this year followed by new malware protections for Chrome, Google says. However, G Suite users won’t get these new protections now — instead, they’re offered through endpoint management, which helps secure devices belonging to mobile workforces.

As Uber and Lyft continue to melt, the 2019 unicorn class loses its shine

Published March 18, 2020

You’d be excused for feeling that mid-2019 was in a different decade as far as venture-backed IPOs go.

Last year saw a number of successful flotations of venture-backed technology and technology-enabled companies, and most performed well after they began trading. But despite some early success, a number of the most famous 2019 IPOs have seen their valuations decline rapidly in ensuing quarters.

In some cases, once richly valued public unicorns are off more than twice the market’s recent declines, have given up all their gains earned as public companies, or fallen under their final private market valuations. It’s a stunning reversal for several of the most-lauded companies to come out of the venture capital machine in a decade.

Manage remote teams with a transparent culture

Published March 18, 2020

Many companies have been designed to optimize productivity when everybody is in the office. As offices close due to the coronavirus outbreak, many people are experimenting with remote work at scale for the first time.

Employees have to learn what it means to work remotely — but managers also have to learn how to keep their teams on track. That’s why it’s interesting to talk about what it’s like to manage a remote team.

Some companies have chosen to give up on the office and work completely remotely. I interviewed Reedsy’s co-founder and CEO Emmanuel Nataf (pictured above, right) about the company’s current work culture. Reedsy operates a marketplace of professionals in the publishing industries: If you’re a writer, you can find editors, designers, marketing experts and more. And if you’re a freelancer in one of those fields, you can find clients.

The short answer: Managing a remote team takes discipline. The long answer is much more interesting as Reedsy has implemented many different processes to foster information transparency. The interview was translated from French and edited for clarity and brevity.

TechCrunch: What does it mean to have a remote culture?

Emmanuel Nataf: I think our case is quite specific. We’re 30 people and what we do cannot necessarily work for a bigger team. It works for smaller teams but maybe not above 50 people.

All Raise CEO Pam Kostka on how the world isn’t ending

Published March 18, 2020

This isn’t the first economic downturn All Raise CEO Pam Kostka has been through.

“I was here during the dot-com bust and rush, and here during the financial fallout that happened, so we’re a little overdue for some corrective action in the market,” Kostka said. “While I’ve been through boom and bust cycles before, this one is more meaningful because life and death are associated with it.”

All Raise is a nonprofit that focuses on increasing diversity within venture capital, both from a decision-maker and a deal perspective. It recently released its annual report, and we covered how female-founded startups landed more deals than ever before in 2019, per PitchBook data.

After our piece looking at the numbers came out, however, some readers weighed in that our coverage missed the mark: In the headline, did we focus too much on progress and not enough on what is left to be done?

Because we’re both social distancing, I caught up with Kostka on the phone and got her take on how to report numbers around diversity without glossing over the work that remains to be accomplished. We also discussed how to stay optimistic during a downturn, potential innovation that might come out of COVID-19 and why diversity matters now more than ever.

Quit Genius raises $11M Series A to expand into opioid, alcohol addiction treatment

Published March 18, 2020

Quit Genius, the YC-backed startup that uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help folks quit smoking and vaping tobacco products, has today announced the close of an $11 million Series A round.

The new funding was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Startup Health and Triple Point Ventures.

Quit Genius was built by doctors — Yusuf Sherwani (co-founder and CEO), Maroof Ahmed (co-founder and COO) and Sarim Siddiqui (co-founder and head of product) — who met on the first day of medical school. They saw the terrible effects of smoking on patients’ health but didn’t see doctors giving those patients a clear path to quit smoking.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is seen as one of the more effective treatments for breaking addiction, helping patients focus on their thoughts, feelings and behaviors and understanding how one affects the others. The Quit Genius app helps users recognize when a negative thought or feeling pops up, and replace those triggering thoughts and emotions with more positive, healthier thoughts. This is done through various types of content, such as audio sessions, animated videos and interactive exercises.

The company also offers a device that can pair with the app to test users’ breath and help hold them accountable to their goal of quitting.

Quit Genius has already made headway with its smoking and vaping products, and is going to use the funding to expand into other types of addiction, such as alcohol and opioid addiction.

Alongside its consumer-facing product, Quit Genius also offers an enterprise product to businesses that are looking to foster a healthy workforce and also save money on healthcare for employees. Unlike most enterprise wellness programs that charge per person per year (regardless of utilization or engagement), Quit Genius only charges by engagement (employees who use the program) and offers a 25% quit rate guarantee.

In other words, if 25% of enrolled users don’t achieve their goal of quitting, Quit Genius will partially refund fees. Thus far, the company hasn’t had to do that, reports CEO Sherwani.

Sherwani added that the company has signed up 15 enterprise clients, split between self-insured employers and health plan providers.

Beyond the funding and expansion into other forms of addiction, Quit Genius is also trying to do its own part as the novel coronavirus pandemic spreads across the globe. Noting the high-risk status of smokers, Sherwani said that the company will offer its product for free to new sign-ups through April so that they can quit smoking immediately.

Founded by doctors, Quit Genius prioritizes efficacy. The company has enlisted independent research studies to show the success rate of its product, the results of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals. According to that research, more than 60,000 people have quit smoking, with a 53% quit rate, which is higher than other quit-smoking techniques.

The startup has raised a total of $13.6 million from investors listed above, as well as Eric Ries, Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, Venus Williams and Instacart co-founder Max Mullen.

Around is the new floating head video chat multitasking app

Published March 18, 2020

You have to actually get work done, not just video call all day, but apps like Zoom want to take over your screen. Remote workers who need to stay in touch while staying productive are forced to juggle tabs. Meanwhile, call participants often look and sound far away, dwarfed by their background and drowned in noise.

Today, Around launches its new video chat software that crops participants down to just circles that float on your screen so you have space for other apps. Designed for laptops, Around uses auto-zoom and noise cancelling to keep your face and voice in focus. Instead of crowding around one computer or piling into a big-screen conference room, up to 15 people can call from their own laptop without echo — even from right next to each other.

“Traditional videoconferencing tries to maximize visual presence. But too much presence gets in the way of your work,” says Around CEO Dominik Zane. “People want to make eye contact. They want to connect. But they also want to get stuff done. Around treats video as the means to an end, not the end in itself.”

Around becomes available today by request in invite-only beta for Mac, windows, Linux, and web. It’s been in private beta since last summer, but now users can sign up here for early access to Around. The freemium model means anyone can slide the app into their stack without paying at first.

After two years in stealth, Around’s 12-person distributed team reveals that it’s raised $5.2 million in seed funding over multiple rounds from Floodgate, Initialized Capital, Credo Ventures, AngelList’s Naval Ravikant, Product Hunt’s Ryan Hoover, Crashlytics’ Jeff Seibert, and angel Tommy Leep. The plan is to invest in talent and infrastructure to keep video calls snappy.

Not Just A Picturephone

Around CEO Dominik Zane

Around was born out of frustration with remote work collaboration. Zane and fellow Around co-founder Pavel Serbajlo had built mobile marketing company M.dot that was acquired by GoDaddy by using a fully distributed team. But they discovered that Zoom was “built around decades-old assumptions of what a video call should be” says Zane. “A Zoom video call is basically a telephone connected to a video camera. In terms of design, it’s not much different from the original Picturephone demoed at the 1964 World’s Fair.”

So together, they started Around as a video chat app that slips into the background rather than dominating the foreground. “We stripped out every unnecessary pixel by building a real-time panning and zooming technology that automatically keeps callers’ faces–and only their faces–in view at all times” Zane explains. It’s basically Facebook Messenger’s old Chat Heads design, but for the desktop enterprise.

Calls start with a shared link or /Around Slack command. You’re never unexpectedly dumped into a call, so you can stay on task. Since participants are closely cropped to their faces and not blown up full screen, they don’t have to worry about cleaning their workspace or exactly how their hair looks. That reduces the divide between work-from-homers and those in the office.

As for technology, Around’s “EchoTerminator” uses ultrasonic audio to detect nearby laptops and synchronization to eliminate those strange feedback sounds. Around also employs artificial intelligence and the fast CPUs of modern laptops to suppress noise like sirens, dog barks, washing machines, or screaming children. A browser version means you don’t have to wait for people to download anything, and visual emotes like “Cool idea” pop up below people’s faces so they don’t have to interrupt the speaker.

Traditional video chat vs Around

“Around is what you get when you rethink video chat for a 21st-century audience, with 21st-century technology,” says Initialized co-founder and general partner Garry Tan. “Around has cracked an incredibly difficult problem, integrating video into the way people actually work today. It makes other video-call products feel clumsy by comparison.”

There’s one big thing missing from Around: mobile. Since it’s meant for multitasking, it’s desktop/laptop only. But that orthodoxy ignores the fact that a team member on the go might still want to chime in on chats, even with just audio. Mobile apps are on the roadmap, though, with plans to allow direct dial-in and live transitioning from laptop to mobile. The 15-participant limit also prevents Around from working for all-hands meetings.

Competing with video calling giant Zoom will be a serious challenge. Nearly a decade of perfecting its technology gives Zoom super low latency so people don’t talk over each other. Around will have to hope that its smaller windows let it keep delays down. There’s also other multitask video apps like Loom’s asynchronously-recorded video clips that prevent distraction.

With coronavirus putting a new emphasis on video technology for tons of companies, finding great engineers could be difficult. “Talent is scarce, and good video is hard tech. Video products are on the rise. Google and large companies snag all the talent, plus they have the ability and scale to train audio-video professionals at universities in northern Europe” Zane tells me. “Talent wars are the biggest risk and obstacle for all real-time video companies.”

But that rise also means there are tons of people fed up with having to stop work to video chat, kids and pets wandering into their calls, and constantly yelling at co-workers to “mute your damn mic!” If ever there was a perfect time to launch Around, it’s now.

“Eight years ago we were a team of locals and immigrants, traveling frequently, moving between locations and offices” Zane recalls. “We realized that this was the future of work and it’s going to be one of the most significant transformations of modern society over the next 30 years . . . We’re building the product we’ve wanted for ourselves.”

One of the best things about working remotely is you don’t have colleagues randomly bugging you about superfluous nonsense. But the heaviness of traditional video chat swings things too far in the other direction. You’re isolated unless you want to make a big deal out of scheduling a call. We need presence and connection, but also the space to remain in flow. We don’t want to be away or on top of each other. We want to be around.

Slack introduces simplified interface as usage moves deeper into companies

Published March 18, 2020

When Slack first launched in 2013, the product was quickly embraced by developers, and the early product reflected that. To get at advanced tools, you used a slash (/) command, but the company recognizes that as it moves deeper into the enterprise, it needed to simplify the interface.

Today, the company introduced a newly designed interface aimed at easing the user experience, making Slack more of an accessible enterprise communications hub.

Jaime DeLanghe, director of product management at Slack, says that the messaging application has become a central place for people to communicate about work, which has grown even more important as many of us have begun working from home as a result of COVID-19.

But DeLanghe says usage was up even before the recent work from home trend began taking off. “People are connected to Slack, on average, about nine hours a day and they’re using Slack actively for almost 90 minutes,” she told TechCrunch.

To that end, she says her team has been working hard to update the interface.

“From my team’s perspective, we want to make sure that the experience is as simple to understand and get on-boarded as possible,” she said. That also means surfacing more advanced tooling, which has been hidden behind those slash commands in previous versions of the tool.

She said that the company has been trying to address the needs of the changing audience over the years by adding many new features, but admits that has resulted in some interface clutter. Today’s redesign is meant to address that.

New Slack interface. Screenshot: Slack

Among the new features, besides the overall cleaner look, many people will welcome the new ability to nest channels to organize them better in the Channel sidebar. As your channels proliferate, it becomes harder to navigate them all. Starting today, users can organize their channels into logical groupings with labels.

New nested channel labels in Slack. Screenshot: Slack

DeLanghe is careful to point out that this channel organization is personal, and cannot be done at an administrative level. “The channels don’t actually live inside of another channel. You’re creating a label for them, so that you can organize them in the sidebar for just yourself, not for everybody,” she explained.

Other new features include an improved navigation bar at the top of the window, a centralized search and help tool also located at the top of the window and a universal compose button in the Sidebar.

All of these new features are designed to help make Slack more accessible to users, as more employees start using it across an organization.

What to consider when employees need to start working remotely

Israel passes emergency law to use mobile data for COVID-19 contact tracing

Published March 18, 2020

Israel has passed an emergency law to use mobile phone data for tracking people infected with COVID-19 including to identify and quarantine others they have come into contact with and may have infected.

The BBC reports that the emergency law was passed during an overnight sitting of the cabinet, bypassing parliamentary approval.

Israel also said it will step up testing substantially as part of its respond to the pandemic crisis.

In a statement posted to Facebook, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote: “We will dramatically increase the ability to locate and quarantine those who have been infected. Today, we started using digital technology to locate people who have been in contact with those stricken by the Corona. We will inform these people that they must go into quarantine for 14 days. These are expected to be large – even very large – numbers and we will announce this in the coming days. Going into quarantine will not be a recommendation but a requirement and we will enforce it without compromise. This is a critical step in slowing the spread of the epidemic.”

“I have instructed the Health Ministry to significantly increase the number of tests to 3,000 a day at least,” he added. “It is very likely that we will reach a higher figure, even up to 5,000 a day. To the best of my knowledge, relative to population, this is the highest number of tests in the world, even higher than South Korea. In South Korea, there are around 15,000 tests a day for a population five or six times larger than ours.”

On Monday an Israeli parliamentary subcommittee on intelligence and secret services discussed a government request to authorize Israel’s Shin Bet security service to assist in a national campaign to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus — but declined to vote on the request, arguing more time is needed to assess it.

Civil liberties campaigners have warned the move to monitor citizens’ movements sets a dangerous precedent.

Netanyahu’s announcement that he intends to bypass parliamentary oversight and implement emergency regulations that authorize the Shin Bet to locate Corona patients actualizes this danger.

— ACRI (@acri_online) March 16, 2020

According to WHO data, Israel had 200 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of yesterday morning. Today the country’s health ministry reported cases had risen to 427.

Details of exactly how the tracking will work have not been released — but, per the BBC, the location data of people’s mobile devices will be collected from telcos by Israel’s domestic security agency and shared with health officials.

It also reports the health ministry will be involved in monitoring the location of infected people to ensure they are complying with quarantine rules — saying it can also send text messages to people who have come into contact with someone with COVID-19 to instruct them to self isolate.

In recent days Netanyahu has expressed frustration that Israel citizens have not been paying enough mind to calls to combat the spread of the virus via voluntary social distancing.

“This is not child’s play. This is not a vacation. This is a matter of life and death,” he wrote on Facebook. “There are many among you who still do not understand the magnitude of the danger. I see the crowds on the beaches, people having fun. They think this is a vacation.”

“According to the instructions that we issued yesterday, I ask you not leave your homes and stay inside as much as possible. At the moment, I say this as a recommendation. It is still not a directive but that can change,” he added.

Since the Israeli government’s intent behind the emergency mobile tracking powers is to combat the spread of COVID-19 by enabling state agencies to identify people whose movements need to be restricted to avoid them passing the virus to others, it seems likely law enforcement agencies will also be involved in enacting the measures.

That will mean citizens’ smartphones being not just a tool of mass surveillance but also a conduit for targeted containment — raising questions about the impact such intrusive measures might have on people’s willingness to carry mobile devices everywhere they go, even during a pandemic.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that the US government is considering similar location-tracking technology measures in a bid to check the spread of COVID-19 — with discussions ongoing between tech giants, startups and White House officials on measures that could be taken to monitor the disease.

Last week the UK government also held a meeting with tech companies to ask for their help in combating the coronavirus. Per Wired some tech firms offered to share data with the state to help with contact tracing — although, at the time, the government was not pursuing a strategy of mass restrictions on public movement. It has since shifted position.