Technology

On May 25-26, hundreds of Europebest and brightest coders, hackers, tech makers and programmers will descend upon Paris to take part inTechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTechand compete for a€5,000 grand prize. But who are the people who will determine who gets that prize Without further ado the judges for the TC Hackthon:

Nicolas Bacca, CTO, LedgerNicolas worked on card systems for 5 years at Oberthur, a leader in embedded digital security, ultimately as R-D Solution Architect. He left Oberthur to launch his company, Ubinity, which was developing smartcard operating systems.

He finally co-founded BT Chip to develop an open standard, secure element based hardware wallet which eventually became the first version of the Ledger wallet.

Charles Gorintin, co-founder - CTO, AlanCharles Gorintin is a French data science and engineering leader. He is a cofounder and CTO of Alan. Alanmission is to make it easy for people to be in great health.

Prior to co-founding Alan, Charles Gorintin was a data science leader at fast-growing social networks, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, where he worked on anti-fraud, growth, and social psychology.

Gorintin holds a Masters degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, a Masters degree in Machine Learning from ENS Paris-Saclay, and a Masters of Financial Engineering from UC Berkeley & Haas School of Business.

Samantha Jérusalmy, Partner, Elaia Partners Samantha joined Elaia Partners in 2008. She began her career as a consultant at Eurogroup, a consulting firm specialized in organisation and strategy, within the Bank and Finance division. She then joined Clipperton Finance, a corporate finance firm dedicated to high-tech growth companies, before moving to Elaia Partners in 2008. She became an Investment Manager in 2011 then a Partner in 2014.

Laure Némée, CTO, Leetchi Laure has spent her career in software development in various startups since 2000 after an engineerdegree in computer science. She joined Leetchi at the very beginning in 2010 and has been Leetchi Group CTO since. She now works mainly on MANGOPAY, the payment service for sharing economy sites that was created by Leetchi.

Benjamin Netter, CTO, Lendix Benjamin is the CTO of Lendix, the leading SME lending platform in continental Europe. Learning to code at 8, he has been since then experimenting ways to rethink fashion, travel or finance using technology. In 2009, in parallel with his studies at EPITECH, he created one of the first French applications on Facebook (Questions entre amis), which was used by more than half a million users. In 2011, he won the Foursquare Global Hackathon by reinventing the travel guide with Tripovore. In 2014, he launched Somewhere, an Instagram travel experiment acclaimed by the press. He is today reinventing with Lendix the way European companies get faster and simpler financing.

And finally here are our hackmasters that will guide our hackers to success:

Emily Atkinson, Software Engineer / MD, DevelopHer UKEmily is a Software Engineer at Condé Nast Britain, and co-founder - Managing Director of women in tech network DevelopHer UK. Her technical role involves back-end services, infrastructure ops and tooling, site reliability and back-end product. Entering tech as an MSc Computer Science grad, she spent six years at online print startup MOO & working across the platform, including mobile web and product. As an advocate for diversity and inclusion in STEM - digital in 2016 Atkinson launched DevelopHer, a volunteer-run non-profit community aimed at increasing diversity in tech by empowering members to develop their career and skills through events, workshops, networking and mentoring.

Romain Dillet, Senior Writer, TechCrunchRomain attended EMLYON Business School, a leading French business school specialized in entrepreneurship. He covers many things from mobile apps with great design to fashion, Apple, AI and complex tech achievements. He also speaks at major tech conferences. He likes pop culture more than anything in the world.

There are a hand full of free tickets left to participate but you must register, sosign up now before ittoo late.

Edge Sense has always been a gimmick — but who can blame HTC for embracing a gimmick. The companymobile division has been struggling in recent years, so why not embrace the novelty of a squeezable side input The tech got a bit more support when Google embraced it for the Pixel 2, renaming it Active Edge in the process.

With todayannouncement of the U12+, HTC is introducing Edge Sense 2. The company promised it would keep updating the feature, and this new flagship is starting to making it that much more compelling. The second generation doesn&t make it an essential feature, but some key additions point to how more sensors on the sides of the handset could turn it into more than just a glorified additional button for the phone.

Some of the coolest additions here are the ability for the phone to recognize which hand is holding it and adapt the interface accordingly. When held in a single hand, the feature offers up multiple options, including the ability to lock screen orientation for video viewing and squeezing to take photos or shoot video. And, that functionality is customizable, meaning users won&t get locked into a devoted Bixby button-style situation here.

Also worth noting on the Edge Sense front is that HTC has swapped out the mechanical buttons on the side of the phone, moving instead toward haptic feedback. It takes a little getting used to, but the upshot is that it helps keep the phone that much more water-resistant, and fewer moving parts means less opportunity for breakage — always a good thing.

As far as the other ways HTC is working to distinguish its latest flagship, the six-inch handset retains the &Liquid Surface& design language found on the U11. The glossy service is even more aesthetically distinct this time out, with the addition of the Translucent Blue color scheme, which offers a cloudy and colorful peek into the phoneinnards.

The camera deserves mention here, too. Granted, ita tough place to distinguish your handset these days, but the U12+ scored a 103 from DxOMark, which puts it ahead of the rest of the handset market, save for the Huawei P20 Pro with its ridiculous three cameras. Highlights for its two cameras include super-fast autofocus and HDR Boost 2 for improved images in poor lighting conditions.

HTCmade a point of upping its game on the audio front, and that continues here with loud built-in speakers and a pair of active noise-cancelling earbuds. Inside is a Snapdragon 845, coupled with 6GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage. All in all, itlooking like a solid handset.

Thereno notch on the screen this time out, but the company implied in a meeting that thatsomething likely to arrive on the next-gen flagship. The phone goes up for pre-order today and will start shipping early next month. No word on pricing yet, but HTC tells me it won&t be &dramatically different& than its predecessor.

Tickets are going fast for our inaugural Tel Aviv event and no one should miss out on the opportunity to see some the nationrising stars discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead for mobility technologies.

Hear from some of the architects and creators of Israellatest technology marvels like Orit Nissan Messing, the co-founder and Chief Architect of Iguazio. And government officials like Anat Lea Bonshtien, the chairman and director of the Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Initiative in the Prime MinisterOffice, who are driving mobility technologies forward.

Fiona Darmon, the Chief Operating Officer of one of Israelpre-eminent venture funds, JVP, will join us alongside Natalie Refuah, a partner with the growth capital investment firm Viola Growth, to discuss how businesses can scale and make the right moves as they navigate their inevitable international expansion.

They&re all part of a stellar line up that we&ve put together to take the pulse of one of the hottest trends in tech and one thatincreasingly reliant on Israeli technology companies to fulfill the promise of its potential.

These phenomenal speakers will be sharing insights that no one would want to miss, and they&ll be exclusively available to our audience in Tel Aviv.