Technology

Gartner: Enterprises should demand 2 full years of Windows 10 support

Corporate customers should lobby Microsoft to turn a temporary 24-month Windows 10 support lifecycle into a permanent fixture, according to Gartner Research analyst Stephen Kleynhans.

"Twenty-four months would be better for everybody," Kleynhans said.

[ Further reading: How to handle Windows 10 updates ]

More than a year ago, Microsoft formalized a twice-annual Windows 10 schedule for delivering feature upgrades, promising to support each upgrade for 18 months. A feature upgrade released in September 2017, for example, was to be supported with security patches and other bug fixes until March 2019.

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (99 Comments)

Facebook didn&t see Cambridge Analytica breach coming because it was focused ‘on the old threat&

In light of the massive data scandal involving Cambridge Analytica around the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a lot of people wondered how something like that could&ve happened. Well, Facebook didn&t see it coming, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said at the Code conference this evening.

&If you go back to 2016 and you think about what people were worried about in terms of nations, states or election security, it was largely spam and phishing hacking,& Sandberg said. &Thatwhat people were worried about.&

She referenced the Sony email hack and how Facebook didn&t have a lot of the problems other companies were having at the time. Unfortunately, while Facebook was focused on not screwing up in that area, &we didn&t see coming a different kind of more insidious threat,& Sandberg said.

Sandberg added, &We realized we didn&t see the new threat coming. We were focused on the old threat and now we understand that this is the kind of threat we have.&

Moving forward, Sandberg said, Facebook now understands the threat and that itbetter able to meet those threats leading in to future elections.On stage, Sandberg also said Facebook was not only late to discovering Cambridge Analyticaunauthorized access to its data, but that Facebook still doesn&t know exactly what data Cambridge Analytica accessed. Facebook was in the midst of conducting its own audit when the U.K. government decided to conduct one of their own, therefore putting Facebookon hold.

&They didn&t have any data that we could&ve identified as ours,& Sandberg said. &To this day, we still don&t know what data Cambridge Analytica had.&

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (98 Comments)

Therea new unicorn in the global ride-hailing space after Taxify, a startup born in Estonia that does battle with Uber across Europe and Africa, closed $175 million in new funding that takes it valuation to the $1 billion mark.

Daimler, the German automotive giant which ownsMercedes-Benz among other things, led the round. The investment also featured participation from new backers Europe-basedKorelya Capital and Taavet Hinrikus, founder of billion-dollar Estonian fintech startup Transferwise. Taxify said thatChinaDidi Chuxing was among the returninginvestors to join.

The company said it plans to deploy the capital to develop its technology and make further expansions in Europe and Asia.

Beyond its automotive business, Daimler has taken a role in ride-hailing already. Its investments in the space include the acquisition of car-sharing business car2Go and German car-pooling startup Flinc, while it has put money into Europe-based car-pooling company Viaand Turo, another car-sharing service which took on Daimlerrival service Croove. More widely, Daimler and BMW consolidated their mobility businesses— which include parking apps, charging solutions, ride-hailing and more — in a consolidation move made in March of this year. Now, added to that, Daimler will take a seat on the Taxify board.

Given its extensive interest in mobility, it makes sense that Daimler is backing Taxify, which has emerged as the main contender battling Uber in Europe and Africa, while it has also forayed into Australia, too. Surprisingly, the round is the first major fundraising moment for Taxify, which had raised just€2 million ($2.4 million) prior toDidiundisclosed investment last year.

&We&re on a mission to build the future of mobility, and itgreat to have the support of investors like Daimler and Didi,& said CEO and co-founder Markus Villig in a statement. &This is just the beginning as more and more people give up on car ownership and opt for on-demand transportation.&

The ride-sharing space hashomogenized somewhat in recent years with most companies offer the same services, so against that backdrop Taxify has something of a unique story. The startup was founded in Estonia in 2013 — the home of tech giant Skype — but brothersMarkus Villig, then 19 years old, and his brother Martin, who had worked for Skype.

Villig junior is now just 24 years old which makes him one of the youngest heads of a billion-dollar company in the world. OYO founderRitesh Agarwal is one month older, although hedid lead a unicorn at an even younger age. Still, itquite an achievement however you mix it.

His original vision was to build a service for his native Estonia using money borrowed from his parents, but that vision expanded and the service is now present in over 25 countries, predominantly in Europe and Africa.Markus Villig said today that the company has more than 500,000 drivers and over 10 million users, a big jump on the 2.5 million users it claimed back in August.Villig added that Taxifyride volumes grew ten-fold last year, although he did not provide a raw figure.

UberEuropean rival Taxify raises $175M led by Daimler at a $1B valuation

Taxify CEO and co-founder Markus Villig

Markus has explained in the past that Taxifystrategy focuses on being the second mover, most often behind Uber .

&We go into markets where ride-sharing is already a proven concept… we come in and we improve on that by having just cheaper commissions and giving more back to the riders and drivers. We don&t want to get into this regulatory troubles and be wasting millions in lobby battles,& he told Bloomberg in an interview last year.

A key moment for Taxify was snagging investment from Didi Chuxing, the Chinese firm that acquired UberChina business and removed it from the country.

Didi backed Taxify via an undisclosed &eight-figure U.S. dollar sum& last August but, beyond capital, gave it access to its network of knowledge and experience, particularly around operations.

This kind of deal is common for Didi, which raised a $4 billion investment at the end of last year for expansion purposes andhas backed Uber rivals across the world with capital and mentoring. Didiinvestments include Lyft in the U.S., Grab in Southeast Asia (which recently bought out Uberlocal business), Ola in India, Careem in the Middle East and 99 in Brazil, which Didi itself acquired in January 2018 for its first international expansion move.

Note: The original version of this article was updated to correct the number of Taxify drivers and that RiteshAgarwalage.

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (97 Comments)

Much like the unique and forking joy of catching an eevee you plan to evolve, Poké trainers have some exciting branching paths ahead of them.

In a dedicated press event in Tokyo, the Pokémon Company, Nintendo and Niantic announced three new Pokémon games with another on the way in late 2019. The first game, a casual &free to start& RPG called Pokémon Quest, is already available for download on the Nintendo Switch.

Pokémon quest revisits the well loved core cast of ‘mons from the Kanto region (think Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow era) but with a cubist twist. The game will hit the Switch first (italready there!) before expanding to iOS and Android later in June. Cube charizard, be mine.

Beyond the cute cubey apéritif, a beginner-friendly set of games called Pokémon: LetGo, Pikachu! and Pokémon: LetGo, Eevee! will hit the Switch on November 16. According to its creators, the two titles &bring the experience of a classic Pokémon RPG to Nintendo Switch with gameplay that is easily approachable for newcomers to the series, but is also deep enough to keep veteran Trainers on their toes.& We&ll see about that.

The Pokémon Company also explained that the two games will tie into the hit mobile experience of Pokémon Go, though we don&t know the full extent of what that looks like yet:

&There is a deep connection between Pokémon GO and Pokémon: LetGo, Pikachu! and Pokémon: LetGo, Eevee! For one thing, Pokémon originally discovered in the Kanto region that you have caught in Pokémon GO can be brought into these two new Nintendo Switch games. Thatnot all, though. Look forward to more details at a later date.&

Beyond the crowd-pleasing option to center either pikachu or eevee (letbe real, you&re picking eevee), the LetGo games will showcase a new peripheral for the Switch known as the Poké Ball Plus thatdesigned to simulate the evocative gesture that seasoned trainers know so well. Apparently, Nintendo put plenty of thought into that experience, so we&re hoping that it really brings to life the sensation of a wild animal wriggling rhythmically as its freedom seeps away, second by second.

Again, these games aren&t the core handheld title that diehardpokéfans are after, but if you&re going to have to wait until 2019 for a propermain series Pokémon RPG experience on the Switch, todaynews should offer plentiful snacks to tide you over.

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (97 Comments)

At the end of the day, there are a lot of processes running on a smartphone-optimized chipsets that aren&t really necessary for the average virtual joeexperience in a face computer. While tacking on more and more power to these headsets has generally been the dominating wisdom of the past five years, itgetting to a point where the hardware that can be built has reached the good-enough stage and ittime to bring costs down and focus on shipping units.

To herald in this necessary step, Qualcomm announced today that it has built a dedicated chipset for standalone headsets. The Snapdragon XR1 is the companyfirst chipset focused exclusively on AR and VR, which the company is collectively referring to as &XR&.

Qualcomm introduces a dedicated chip for mass market AR/VR headsets

Users will be able to enjoy experiences like streaming 4K 30fps content on XR1-powered devices.The company had a number of headset manufacturers onstage for the announcement, including HTC Vive, Vuzix, Meta and Pico. The number of headsets being shipped today are quite small, but Qualcomm is preparing for a near future where it believes unit sales will cross into the hundreds of millions.

Qualcomm was mostly mum on details of how this chipset performs relative to the newly-released Snapdragon 845 — which has its own VR reference design — but it seems fair to assert that the XR1 is probably a lower-cost option for hardware manufacturers that know exactly what they need and don&t want to pay to for an architecture thatbuilt around handling tasks that there devices won&t tackle.

While the Snapdragon 845 is looking to push headsets towards the capabilities offered by PC-tethered systems, the XR1 is looking at low-cost devices that have a better chance at making it on shelves in the near-term. The XR1 won&t support free-moving 6DoF like the 845, but will support tighter movements like its 835 VR platform did.

In an email responding to questions from TechCrunch, Qualcomm XR lead Hiren Bhinde said that the new chipset &will handle fewer workloads as opposed to the 845 for similar power and thermal benchmarks,& while noting that, &[t]here are also some AR customers who don&t need the high graphics or memory bandwidth supported in 845 for their devices, which is what makes the XR1 a perfect fit for them.&

Qualcomm introduces a dedicated chip for mass market AR/VR headsets

When compared to some of todaystandalone VR headsets, many current untethered consumer AR headsets are lightweight in their compute demands because they&re not focused on replicating the world to the fidelity that VR is attempting. Headsets that simply offer a heads-up display and a voice assistant like those being shown off by Qualcomm XR1 partner Vuzixdiffer from what Magic Leap and Microsoft are pursuing with their &mixed reality& devices which enable sophisticated environment mapping so that digital objects can find a natural place in a viewerperiphery.

By building a chipset with lower-cost mass-market headsets in their sights, Qualcomm seems convinced that the time to strike is now and that the XR1 could give manufacturers in the AR/VR space the added boost they need to start shipping hardware.

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (95 Comments)

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says letter about ‘toxic& culture was a wake-up call

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel spoke a bit about some of the cultural issues at the company, going public and competition with Facebook at Recodeannual Code Conference this evening in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

Earlier today, Cheddar reported how a former Snap engineer criticized the company for a &toxic& and &sexist& culture that is not welcoming to women and people of color. In an email former Snap engineer Shannon Lubetich wrote in November, she described how Snap is not adequately promoting diversity at the company.

&The letter was a really good wake-up call for us,& Spiegel said.

Spiegel described how, in light of the letter, Snap hired external consultants to help the company figure out areas in which to improve. Snap also ran a company-wide survey and changed its promotion structure, Spiegel said. He later added that he&proud& of the progress Snap has made over the last few months.

In the letter, Lubetich also described a scenario in which scantily clad women, hired by Snap, dressed up in deer costumes.

&People are going to make mistakes and I was frustrated, to say the least, to see people dressed up as deer at a holiday party,& Spiegel said.

In addition to cultural issues, Snap has also struggled on the public market.SnapQ1 2018 earnings, for example, showed lackluster user growth numbers amid a rocky redesign and increased competition from Facebook.Still, Spiegel said the redesign was the right way to go, as was going public.

&I think this was the logical step forward in being an independent company,& Spiegel said about going public.

Meanwhile, Snap is constantly fending off competition from Facebook. Spiegel initially joked, &I think it bothers my wife more than it bothers me.&

But in all seriousness, Spiegel said Snapvalues of deepening relationships with the people closest to you is &really hard to copy.& Facebook, on the other hand, is more about having people compete online for attention, Spiegel said.

He also joked, in light of Cambridge Analytica scandal, that Snap would &appreciate it if [Facebook] copied our data protection practices as well.&

Details
Category: Technology

Write comment (90 Comments)
  1. Internet titans ask for ‘flexibility’ with new election ad regulations
  2. Canadian Yahoo hacker gets a five-year prison sentence
  3. Snapchat preps Snapkit platform to bring camera, login to other apps
  4. Bird is reportedly raising $150 million at $1 billion valuation
  5. Facebook’s policy on white supremacy plays right into a racist agenda