Technology

When Mitra Raman went off to college, all she wanted was a bowl of her motherhomemade rasam. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Raman grew up eating traditional South Indian cuisine almost every day, but didn&t quite know how to make it just like mom when she left home.

On her next visit back home, she told her mom she missed her cooking. And, being a mom, Mrs. Raman simply packed all the ingredients for rasam in a plastic bag and told her daughter to heat up some water and add it in. Itthat simple.

Thathow Buttermilk was born.

The YC-backed company offers a variety of Indian dishes at a low price that can be cooked up by simply adding hot water.

Based in Seattle, Buttermilk launched in 2017 to the local market and has since expanded to serve their products across the country.

Buttermilk dishes include Sambar, Daal, Khichdi, Rasam, and Upma, all of which cost $6 each. Buttermilk also sells Basmati Rice for $1.50.

While users can buy Buttermilk meals individually, they can also purchase one of Buttermilk&suites,& which pack a handful of meals into one shipment. The suites, including the High Protein Pack, Buttermilk Suite, North Indian Favorites and South Indian Favorites, cost $39.

Last week, Buttermilk introduced an option called Subscribe and Save, which offers the chance to buy monthly subscriptions of pre-set packs for 10 percent off. The company is also launching new meals, including Chana Masala, Coconut Chutney, and Quina and Brown Rice options, starting on July 12. Pre-orders for the new meals start tomorrow.

Buttermilk has plans to add other cuisines to the platform eventually, with the same idea of bringing momhome cooking to people who don&t have the money or time to recreate those meals from scratch. The company is also interested in potentially selling their products in grocery stores or coffee shops beyond the existing online channel.

After making its stage debut at TC Sessions Robotics in Boston last year, the third iteration of MITCheetah robot is back with some impressive new tricks. Associate Professor Sangbae Kim will officially demonstrate the Cheetah 3new capabilities at MadridInternational Conference on Intelligent Robots in October, but in the meantime, we&ve got a sneak peek via laboratory video.

The &Blind Climb on Stairs& portion starts around 1:48. Itnot exactly graceful, but itstill probably a lot better than most of could do attempting to walk up a flight a with our eyes closed. Complicating matters are the small pieces of wood littering the steps, approximating some of the non-ideal circumstances the robot will have to grapple with during the search and rescue missions for which itdesigned.

The Cheetah is doing all of this without any cameras or other visual on-board sensors, using what the team refers to as &blind locomotion,& essentially feeling its way up the stairs. So, why rob such a sophisticated robot of something as seemingly essential as computer vision

&There are many unexpected behaviors the robot should be able to handle without relying too much on vision,& Kim says in a release tied to the announcement. &Vision can be noisy, slightly inaccurate, and sometimes not available, and if you rely too much on vision, your robot has to be very accurate in position and eventually will be slow. So we want the robot to rely more on tactile information. That way, it can handle unexpected obstacles while moving fast.&

The robot utilizes a pair of new algorithms — contact detection and model-predictive control — which help it recover its balance in the case of slippage. The ability helps the robot determine whether to have a leg in the in air or on the ground at a given time, allowing it to tenuously but tenaciously ascend the stairs.

The ability, along with already showcased skills like leaping over objects and running up to 14 miles an hour, are all in service of Cheetahlarger vision of aiding search and rescue missions. The robot is designed to enter areas that might otherwise be too dangerous for its human counterparts.

After less than a year in the role, the CEO of Tivo is leaving the troubled company and jumping to Liberty Global, where he will become its CTO. Enrique Rodriguez, who joined the maker of DVRs, interactive program guides and viewing analytics only November 2017, is stepping away from his role effective immediately, TiVo announced today. A separate announcement from Liberty Global noted that Rodriguez will be joining the broadband and pay-TV company as its EVP and CTO.

Raghu Rau, who is on TiVoboard, has been named the interim president and CEO of the company. Rodriguez will keep an advisory role, TiVo said.

The sudden departure of the CEO comes amid some wider turmoil at TiVo. Formerly known as Rovi but rebranded after it acquired the DVR maker in 2016 for $1.1 billion, TiVo has been exploring strategic alternatives since February of this year, which could include going private or selling itself. It also lost its CTO in June this yearto Hulu.

&My personal decision to pursue another opportunity was not easy,& Rodriguez said in a statement. &I couldn&t be more excited about what lies ahead for TiVo as I expect our performance through the second quarter of 2018, including our announced profit improvement actions, to be ahead of our internal plan. I am looking forward to continue my relationship with TiVo in my new role as a customer and partner. Until then, I am committed to working with the TiVo team to ensure a seamless transition.&

Tivo (and before it Rovi) had a strong early role in developing services that have led consumers to watch TV in different ways — by being able to record and &time-shift& linear programming, for example — a disruptive moment in the TV business because it ate into consumers& advertising attention.

But as is the way in the world of tech, the disruptor has also become the disrupted. Today, streaming both live and on-demand video, often directly from the internet without any use of DVRs, has led to the rise of cord-cutting, where people opt out of taking traditional cable or satellite pay-TV services and instead pay for their services ‘over the top& of their broadband connections.

And that has taken a toll on TiVo, it seems. Despite the launch of a plethora of other services such as Alexa voice controlsand better controls for pay-TV providers to match the features they get with streaming services, the companystock has been slipping for the better part of a year. In its last earnings, its net revenues were $214.2 million, nearly $40 million off what analysts had expected.

In contrast, Rodriquez is joining a company whose market cap is currently over $22 billion, more than ten times as much as TiVO&s, with a fix-services customer base of 22 million, and a further 7 million mobile subscribers. But in the context of how TV media appears to be evolving away from traditional pay-TV and towards streaming and OTT, you could say that hejumping from the frying pan into the fire.

Liberty earlier this year offloaded €18.4 billion of its European assets to Vodafone, after rumors first circulated that Vodafone might seek to acquire Liberty outright.

Liberty has also seen its stock price dip in the last six months, and it too is in the midst of trying to figure out what might be the best route forward for itself, considering its mix of businesses — albeit well short of anything like a strategic review. (Italso a key customer of TiVo&s.)

Rodriguez is an interesting pick in that regard because of his experience across the range of players in the pay-TV ecosystem, with previous roles also at AT-T, Microsoft, Cisco and Thomson, with a specialty of trying to help tech and telco companies figure out how they can play more deeply in the media space.

&Enrique is a seasoned executive who will hit the ground running on day one. In todaytechnology environment the best CTOs have worked across sectors, platforms and geographies. Enrique has C-level experience as an engineer, software developer and operator,& said Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global, in a statement.

&He has managed multi-billion dollar businesses for companies like AT-T, Microsoft, Cisco and Thomson, and has a long history in digital television as well as the European broadband sector. As head of MicrosoftConnected TV business, he launched IPTV solutions for telecommunication companies around the world, including many of our competitors.More recently, at AT-T, he was responsible for the teams that developed and launched DIRECTVsuccessful OTT service, DIRECTV Now. I&m particularly excited to tap into Enriqueknowledge of video products and platforms as we ramp up innovation in our TV business. Hethe right leader at the right time for Liberty Global.&