Technology

It8:00 PM on Friday night and you&re home alone and already drunk. Oh, is that just me Well no matter. Snapchat has made lenses for your cat now. Yes, thatright. Your cat! This is what the internet is made for, friends. Not all that fake news and trolling. Not having to read tweets where people use words like &woke& unironically. Cat lenses!

So technically, I guess, Snapchat added the ability to recognize things in your photos last November, like food, sports, and even pets, then suggest appropriate filters & like a sticker that says &IT&S A PAWTY& above a photo of a dog.

But now you can put a set of matching glasses on yourself and your cat.

Or give you and your cat rainbow unicorn horns.

Or give Mr. Fluffypants some big ol& googley eyes.

Or put a piece of toast over his face, which makes him look even less amused than usual.

What the actual f***

You can even give you and kitty big, fat lips as you kissy face the camera.

You can be the angel, while the cat gets devil horns and wings, as is & of course, appropriate.

I mean, this may or may not solve Snaplong list of problems, like its rushed redesign, the mess thatSnapchat Discover, its inability to attract adult users, falling share price, and ooooh, all that money itbleeding. ($353M last quarter!)

And that Saudi money, don&t forget that! (No, seriously, don&t.)

But I mean, c&mon. C&MON.

Internet, we deserve this.

This is what 2018 needs.

Cat lenses.

Cat lenses to make everything better.

Cat lenses, and this here drink.

Mozilla filed a lawsuit in August alleging the FCC had unlawfully overturned 2015net neutrality rules, by among other things &fundamentally mischaracteriz[ing] how internet access works.& The FCC has filed its official response, and as you might expect it has doubled down on those fundamental mischaracterizations.

The Mozilla suit, which you can read here or embedded at the bottom of this post, was sort of a cluster bomb of allegations striking at the FCC order on technical, legal, and procedural grounds. They aren&t new, revelatory arguments — they&re what net neutrality advocates have been saying for years.

There are at least a dozen separate allegations, but most fall under two general categories.

1. That the FCC wrongly classifies broadband as an &information service& rather than a &telecommunications service.& Therea long story behind this that I documented in the Commission Impossible series. The logic on which this determination is based has been refuted by practically every technical authority and really is just plain wrong. This pulls the rug out from numerous justifications for undoing the previous rules and instating new ones.

2. That by failing to consider consumer complaints or perform adequate studies on the state of the industry, federal protections, and effects of the rules, the FCCorder is &arbitrary and capricious& and thus cannot be considered to have been lawfully enacted.

The FCCresponses to these allegations are likewise unsurprising. The bulk of big rulemaking documents like Restoring Internet Freedom isn&t composed of the actual rules but in the justification of those rules. So the FCC took preventative measures in its proposal identifying potential objections (like Mozilla&s) and dismissing them by various means.

That their counter-arguments on the broadband classification are nothing new is in itself a little surprising, though. These very same arguments were rejected by a panel of judges in the DC circuit back in 2015. In fact, recently-appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh distinguished himself on that very decision by being wrong on every count and receiving an embarrassing intellectual drubbing by his better-informed peer, Judge Srinivasan.

As for the arbitrary and capricious allegation, the FCC merely reiterates that all its decisions were reasonable as justified at the time. Mozillaarguments are not given serious consideration; for example, when Mozilla pointed out that thousands of pages of comments had been essentially assumed by the FCC to be irrelevant without reviewing them, the FCC responds that it &reasonably decided not to include largely unverified consumer complaints in the record.&

These statements aren&t the end of the line; there will be more legal wrangling, amicus briefs, public statements, amended filings, and so on before this case is decided. But if you want a good summary of the hard legal arguments against the FCC and a vexing dismissal thereof, these two documents will serve for weekend reading.

The Mozilla suit:

Mozilla v FCC Filing by TechCrunch on Scribd

The FCCcounter-arguments:

Mozilla v FCC Counterfiling by TechCrunch on Scribd

The app for hiking enthusiasts just secured a big round of capital that will help it map more trails worldwide.

AllTrailshas raised $75 million, led by Spectrum Equity, which has taken a majority stake in the company in the process. Founded in 2010, AllTrails raised a small amount of capital years ago from investors, including 2020 Ventures and 500 Startups. It was also part ofAngelPadinauguralaccelerator class. This is its first sizeable round of equity financing.

AllTrails provides what it calls an &outdoors platform& that includes crowdsourced reviews of trails from its community of 9 million avid hikers, mountain bikers and trail runners in more than 100 countries. It also provides detailed trail maps and other content tailor-made for outdoorsy folk. The company says its app has been downloaded more than 12 million times.

AllTrails was founded by Russell Cook, who has since left to launch another fitness tech startup calledFitOn. The company is now led byJade Van Doren, who joined as CEO in September 2015.

&I grew up camping in the Sierras with my grandfather and backpacking up there,& Cook told TechCrunch. &I looked around the space and it felt like there was a lot of room to build something meaningful that would help people find places to get outdoors and feel safe once they are out there.&

&I got really excited about doing that and we&ve made a lot of progress toward those goals,& he added. &I enjoy waking up in the morning and knowing what we are building is helping people live healthier and more active lifestyles.&

Cook said the business is cash flow positive and wasn&t seeking a venture capital infusion when Spectrum approached. He says their expertise in the consumer space — the firm also has investments in Ancestry, WeddingWire and several others — will be a big value-add for AllTrails.

In additionto expanding overseas, the company will use the capital to hire aggressively.

As part of the deal, Spectrum&sBen Spero and Matt Neidlinger will join AllTrails& board of directors.