Technology

Original Content podcast: ‘Love is Blind& adds a touch of reality to a silly premise

Even by the standards of romantic competition reality shows, &Love is Blind& has a doozy of a concept: A group of men and women &date& by talking in pods where they can only hear each othervoices. In just a little over a week, they&re expected to start proposing marriage to someone who they&ve never seen.

On this weekepisode of the Original Content podcast, we&re joined by TechCrunch marketing director (and reality TV expert) Alexandra Ames to review the just-wrapped first season of the Netflix show. As we explain, the series actually moves beyond its initial high concept pretty quickly — after the first few episodes, the newly-engaged couples leave the pods and to see if their relationships can survive in the real world.

So the show prompted plenty of discussion about relationships and reality TV in general. At the same time, we&re happy to gossip about the most and least interesting couples, and about who left who at the altar.

And we also some thoughts about the choice of Nick and Vanessa Lachey as the hosts. (Hey, at least most of their material appears to have been left on the cutting room floor.)

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcastsor find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

And if you&d like to skip ahead, herehow the episode breaks down:

0:00 Intro 0:59 &Love Is Blind& spoiler-free review 28:12 &Love Is Blind& spoiler discussion

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We are reading the penultimate short story in Ted Chiang collection Exhalation. Omphalos questions what it means to believe: in our world, in alternative worlds, and in ourselves. Given that beliefs are crucial to everything we do in innovation and science, I thought the theme deeply dovetailed with a lot of what TechCrunch readers care about. I&m excited to talk about it more.

Tomorrow, I will post analysis on the final short story, Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom as well as some concluding thoughts now that we have cycled through all the short stories in this collection. What a journey!

Some further quick notes:

  • Want to join the conversation? Feel free to email me your thoughts at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (we got a real email address!) or join some of the discussions on Reddit or Twitter (hashtag TCBookClub)
  • Follow these informal book club articles here: https://techcrunch.com/book-review/. That page also has a built-in RSS feed for posts exclusively in the Book Review category, which is very low volume.
  • Feel free to add your comments in our TechCrunch comments section below this post.

Reading Omphalos

Most of the stories in Exhalation have been pieces of deep imagination, filled with worlds that, while tethered to our experience on Earth, remain quite distant to it. Omphalos feels quite different: it very much is our world, but refracted just slightly at every point.

Chiang signals this to the reader right from the beginning, noting that the narrator is traveling to &Chicagou,& a city that is obviously recognizable to us, but just slightly off from our expectations. And indeed, as the story progresses, we learn that everything in the sciences are just a bit different from what we presume. Scientific discoveries that have happened in our world have yet to happen in this story (the discovery of DNA, for instance), while exciting fields in our world today like astronomy are essentially complete, with no further innovation to come.

The storycentral tension is between faith and science, but the tweaks that Chiang edits into this speculative world force us to observe our own world with new insight. The development of science as a human practice was highly contentious in our history, with Galileo and the fight over heliocentrism being one of many battlefields fought over the centuries.

In this story though, science isn&t at war with religion, but in fact provides a path to deepening devotion to belief, undergirding the pursuit of purpose in a world of mystery. Our narrator, an archaeologist, describes why she does her work, and why the single miraculous creation of the human race is so important to belief.

I asked them to imagine what it would be like if we lived in a world where, no matter how deeply we dug, we kept finding traces of an earlier era of the world … then I asked, wouldn&t they feel lost, like a castaway adrift on an ocean of time? … this is why I am a scientist: because I wish to discover your purpose for us, Lord.

Indeed, the Earth itself is the very creation of God, and therefore is studied with an intensity that we would find unusual, while astronomy and the exploration of the celestial world is relegated to the side.

I admit, Lord, that I&ve never had much regard for astronomy; it has always struck me as the dullest of the sciences. The life sciences are seemingly limitless; every year we discover new species of plants and animals and gain a deeper appreciation of your ingenuity in creating the Earth. By contrast, the night sky is just so finite. All five thousand eight hundred and seventy-two stars were cataloged in 1745, and not another has been found since then.

Chiang has pulled a bit of a legerdemain — we are more interested in the possibilities beneath our feet, rather than what floats above us in the skies.

That setup delivers the storymain thrust: an astronomer has discovered that another planet elsewhere in the galaxy is actually the stationary point of the entire universe, which means that Earthorbit around the sun demonstrates not intelligent design or a message of purpose, but rather pure nihilism. It likely serves no purpose at all.

Chiang refracts our massive historical conflict over heliocentrism, and in so doing forces us to confront the true challenges of modern life. The astronomerdiscovery forces our seemingly devout narrator to question her own faith — not in religion, but actually in science. For if conducing scientific experiments was about finding purpose in life, why should we continue doing them when we know they don&t have a purpose at all?

The title of the story, Omphalos, comes from Greek mythology and symbolizes the navel of the world, or the place where the world is centered on. The astronomerdiscovery dissolves what we thought was the Omphalos — Earth — and prods us to search for a new point to center us and our lives.

Our narratorloss of faith causes her to stop praying and live in a cabin for a few months, but she ultimately comes to the conclusion that the openness of choice around these events is actually empowering for humans, forcing us to confront our own actions and realize we have agency over them.

If we had no evidence for the miracle of creation, we might think physical law was sufficient to explain every phenomenon in the cosmos, leading us to conclude that our own minds were nothing more than natural processes. But we know that there is more to what we observe than physical law can encompass; miracles happen, and human choices are surely among them.

Chiang isn&t critiquing religion or believers, but rather those rationalists who believe deeply in the thesis that we are bags of atoms pre-destined to make the choices we already have made at conception. Ita relatively oblique critique, one only really brought into relief in the storyclosing paragraphs.

Earlier in the story, our narrator asks God, &Let me always be inquisitive, but never be suspicious.& Thatultimately a comment about cynicism and nihilism, that the purpose to everything is nothing and useless. Even in a secular world, there is meaning in every action and reaction, and physics doesn&t determine how we approach our lives. With refractive lenses, we can see that we are each our own Omphalos, architecting the meaning of what we observe.

Reading Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom

As you read the final short story in Exhalation, here are some questions to think about:

  • Would you use a prism? Who would you talk to on the other side? What would you want to know?
  • What does the short story say about envy and empathy? Are we destined to constantly compare ourselves to others?
  • Is having more information about our alternatives better or worse for us? Is there a path of contentment through more information?
  • Do we need role models to redeem ourselves?
  • What does the story say about choice and predestination?
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Well, here we are. After lots of weeks (and a somewhat inconsistent publishing schedule), we have actually arrived at the last story of Ted Chiang & s Exhalation collection, number 9 of 9. It has actually been a fun journey reading each of these speculative science fiction stories, and I do believe they have much to inform TechCrunch readers. Even if you missed out on a few of the discussions, these stories are ageless: What & s Anticipated of Us was very first released in 2005. Leap in now, or dive in later on —-- they will be waiting for you when you are prepared. Today, we have a wonderful deal with the meaning of the options in our lives and what takes place when we have more details about ourselves in alternative timelines. It & s a story that combines quantum entanglement with freedom of the will, connecting technology to the really core of what makes us human. We will talk about Anxiety is the Lightheadedness of Freedom, and after that some concluding ideas on the whole * Exhalation * collection for those who have actually walked with us every action of the method. Some additional quick notes: Wish to sign up with the conversation? Feel free to email me your thoughts at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (we got a real email address!) or join a few of the discussions on Reddit or Twitter (hashtag TCBookClub). Follow these casual book club articles here: https://techcrunch.com/book-review/. That page likewise has a built-in RSS feed for posts specifically in the Book Review classification, which is very low volume. Feel free to include your remarks in our TechCrunch remarks area listed below this post. Checking out Stress And Anxiety is the Lightheadedness of Liberty. This short story is a beautiful combination of speculative science fiction and viewpoint, stressed with numerous plot turnabouts and rivulets of excitement. The story centers around a development called the prism, which is a quantum interactions gadget. When triggered, a prism will cause a binary divergence in future timelines. In one timeline, the prism illuminate its LED red, while in the other timeline it illuminate blue. What & s crucial is that the prisms in the now diverging timelines are linked together, and the device has a & pad & that permits restricted communications between the 2 timelines prior to the pad expires its capacity. With the ideal prism, individuals can talk to themselves in other timelines to explore what may have occurred if various decisions were made. For example, someone might accept a marriage proposition if the prism & s LED turned red or reject it if the prism turned blue. Through the gadget, users can observe how their lives may have been lived —-- involving all type of psychological effects in the process. It & s not surprising then that the plot partially revolves around a support system for people consumed with prisms. Someone, Jorge, fights with the truth that he committed a violent act in this timeline, but then determines that he didn & t in any of the other timelines he was able to connect to. What does this say about his character? Does the reality he generally doesn & t devote the violence show that he has a strong and stable character, who sometimes makes mistakes? Or does the proof show that there is a beast waiting below the surface area, always simply awaiting the right minute to strike? Throughout the story, there is a hidden question about how we use role models in our decisions. In our world, we can design ourselves off of celebrities or well-known people, mentors and coaches, and even historic figures we & ve read about in bios. The prisms diminish this intrinsic range —-- we can model ourselves after actually ourselves. That opens up opportunities for envy and jealousy. When our good example find success, we have the psychological range to observe and show, and perhaps alter our own actions in action. When those designs are ourselves, unexpectedly we can & t help however think that there must be something incorrect with us if our counterparts in other timelines are doing well and we are not. So we harp on our choices, particularly on the significant prophetic decisions that we feel our whole lives focus on. Just like the prisms and the quantum split that takes place inside the device, we ourselves have minutes of binary decision-making. If we are angry, do we slash the tires of the car of the person who put us because position? Do we pull the trigger on a weapon? In one case, Dana, a therapist and a facilitator of the prism support group, damaged her buddy Vinessa in high school throughout a school trip. When a teacher enters their hotel room on an inspection and sees rows of tablets, Dana blames Vinessa, sending her life in a various instructions:. It was as if, prior to that night, Vinessa had actually been stabilized on a knife & s edge; she might have ended up being either what society considered a good girl or a bad woman. Dana & s lie had actually pushed her off the edge, onto the side of being bad, and with that label the course of Vinessa & s life had taken a various direction. Yet, Chiang is deeply hesitant of these binaries. We begin to see twinkles of this as he explains the quantum dynamics behind the prisms, arguing that even a single atomic difference in different timelines can lead to huge modifications in weather condition patterns and eventually the macro events that develop each of those worlds. This butterfly impact implies that our choices have even more disorderly repercussions than we can prepare for. As the author discusses, & Numerous concerned that their choices were rendered useless since every action they took was counterbalanced by a branch in which they had actually made the opposite choice. &. Much like the last story we read, this story doesn & t dive to nihilism. Rather the opposite, it argues that our choices are really reflections of our character, and for that reason our character constrains the probabilities of our actions in future timelines. Nat, our main storyteller, asks during a support system session:. & But when I have an option to do the ideal thing or the incorrect thing, am I always selecting to do both in various branches? Why should I trouble being nice to other individuals, if every time I & m also being a dick to them? &. The facilitator Dana reacts with:. & But if you act compassionately in this branch, that & s still meaningful, due to the fact that it has a result on the branches that will divide off in the future. The more often you make thoughtful choices, the less most likely it is that you & ll make selfish choices in the future, even in the branches where you & re having a bad day. &. While all future possibilities are always present, our innate character identifies the gravity wells that many timelines fall under. Vinessa is upset at Dana for her lie, however as we later discover, she would have been upset in basically every scenario that Dana may have selected. No matter how she dealt with the circumstance, Vinessa would have gone through her down spiral, causing the story & s core message: & If the same thing takes place in branches where you acted differently, they you aren & t the cause. &. We can & t manage the past, and we certainly can & t control alternative timelines. But we can manage our actions today, and those actions are going to collect to affect each and every single diverging timeline in the future. Yes, in some cases our other selves might have gotten luckier, or might have dealt with an unforeseen disaster. Yes, if we understood this we may experience envy, jealousy or horror. But ultimately, all the possibilities on the planet are ultimately circumscribed by ourselves. We can only ever really do what we choose to do. Some concluding thoughts on Exhalation. We & ve come to the end of Exhalation, and in light of the book & s sign, we can breathe now to have a look at all that Chiang has put together with these various stories. To me, the most prominent message that resonates throughout the book is that contingency has no control over our own actions. In many of the stories in this set, Chiang places a brand-new technological object, whether it & s a time-travel gate, digients and virtual worlds, or the prisms in this last story, and shows how humans react to their fresh capabilities. One would think that these technologies would instantly change who we are or how we respond. After all, if we can time travel, interact through timelines, or entirely change our point of view in virtual worlds, shouldn & t that radically alter our identities? Wouldn & t we be totally different people? And yet, Chiang makes his point stridently clear: no. The characters inside each people are barely fixed naturally, however they absolutely affect how we use —-- for excellent and wicked —-- these new innovations. Human beings are going to do what they are going to do, and they are going to do it with whatever tools they have offered to them. That & s not to say that technologies shouldn & t be held responsible for the actions they afford their users. Eventually, it & s a tip that we each have control over our own actions, and we have the right to judge others for the actions they take when confronted with brand-new alternatives. We are eventually all connected, and that indicates that our actions wear & t just impact ourselves, however all people all over through the air, through quantum mechanics, and through the physical laws of our world. Trust yourself, but also comprehend how we can manage our actions for a much better world. If that isn & t a message for start-ups and innovation in 2020, I put on & t understand what is.
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ZenGo is expanding beyond the basic features of a cryptocurrency wallet —letting you hold, send and receive crypto assets. You can now set aside some of your crypto assets to earn interests. In other words, ZenGo now also acts like a savings account.

The company has partnered with two DeFi projects for the new feature. DeFi means &decentralized finance&, and it has been a hot trend in the cryptocurrency space. DeFi projects are the blockchain equivalent of traditional financial products. For instance, you can lend and borrow money, invest in derivative assets and more.

If you want to learn more about DeFi, herean article I wrote on the subject:

DeFi aims to bridge the gap between blockchains and financial services

But letcome back to ZenGo. When you have crypto assets in your ZenGo wallet, you can now open the savings tab, pick an asset, such as Dai, and select what percentage of your holdings you want to set aside.

After that, all you have to do is wait. You get an overview of your savings &accounts& at any time. This way, you can see your total earned interests. Interests are automatically reinvested over time. You can move your money from those DeFi projects back to your wallet whenever you want.

Crypto wallet app ZenGo launches savings mode

Behind the scene, ZenGo uses the Compound protocol, a lending DeFi project. It works a bit like LendingClub, but on the blockchain. Some users send money to Compound to contribute to liquidity pools. Other users borrow money from that pool.

Interest rates go up and down depending on supply and demand. Thatwhy you currently earn more interests when you inject DAI or USD Coin in Compound. But that could change over time.

ZenGo also uses Figment in order to stake Tezos. This time, it isn&t a lending marketplace. When you lock some money in a staking project, it means that you support the operations of a particular blockchain. Few blockchains support staking as they need to be based on proof-of-stake.

For the end user, it looks like a savings account whether you&re relying on Compound or Figment. There are other wallet apps that let you access DeFi projects, such as Coinbase Wallet and Argent. But ZenGo thinks they&re still too complicated for regular users.

ZenGo wants to become the crypto wallet for the masses

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Aziz Gilani Contributor
Aziz Gilani is a Managing Director at Mercury, where he focuses on investments in enterprise SaaS, Cloud and data science startups.
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  • The True Impact Of The Snapchat Writedown For Entrepreneurs

If you were a software company employee or venture capitalist in Silicon Valley before 1993, chances are you were talking about &Information Systems Software& and not &Enterprise Software.& How and why did the industry change its name?

The obvious, but perplexing answer is simple — &Star Trek: The Next Generation.&

As befuddling and mind-numbingly satisfying as it is to your local office Trekkie, the industry rebranded itself thanks to a marketing campaign from the original venture-backed system software company,Boole - Babbage(now BMC software).

While the term &Enterprise& was used to describe complex systems for years before 1993, everything changed when Boole - Babbage signed a two-year licensing agreement with the then-highest-rated show in syndication history to produce an infomercial.

Star Trek fans have been talking about this crazy marketing agreement for years, and you can read the full details about how it was executed in TrekCore. But even Trekkies don&t appreciate its long-term impacts on our industry. In this license agreement with Paramount, Boole - Babbage had unlimited rights to create and distribute as much Star Trek content as they could. They physically mailed VHS cassettes to customers, ran magazine ads and even dressed their employees as members of Starfleet at trade shows. Boole - Babbage used this push to market itself as the &Enterprise Automation Company.&

Commander Riker says in the infomercial, &just as the bridge centralizes the functions necessary to control the USS Enterprise, Booleproducts centralize data processing information to allow centralized control of todaycomplex information systems.& This seemed to scratch an itch that other systems companies didn&t realize needed scratching.

Not to be outdone, IBM in 1994 rebranded their OS/2 operating system &OS/2 Warp,& referring to Star Trek&warp drive.& They also tried to replicate Babbagelicensing agreement with Paramount by hiring the EnterpriseCaptain Picard (played by actor Patrick Stewart) to emcee the product launch. Unfortunately, Paramount wouldn&t play ball, and IBM hired Captain Janeway (played by actress Kate Mulgrew) from Star Trek: Voyager instead. The licensing issues didn&t stop IBM from also hiring Star TrekMr. Spock (played by actor Leonard Nimoy) to tape a five-minute intro to the event:

Outside of OS/2, IBM1994 announcement list included 13 other &enterprise& initiatives. Soon, leading software companies began to rebrand themselves and release products using the term &enterprise software& as a valuable identifier. MRP software makers like SAP and Baan began embracing the new &Enterprise& moniker after 1993 and in 1995, Lotus rebranded itself as an &Enterprise Software Company.&

&Enterprise& was officially the coolest new vernacular and after industry behemoth IBM bought Lotus in 1996, they incorporated &Enterprise& across all of their products. And while Gartner1990 paper &ERP: A Vision of the Next-Generation MRP II& by Wylie is the technical birth of ERP software, no one cared until Commander Riker told Harold to &monitor your entire Enterprise from a single point of control.& The ngram numbers don&t lie:

How the information system industry became enterprise software

Almost 30 years later, we live in a world in which business is run on enterprise software and the use of the term is ubiquitous. Whenever I see a software business plan come across my desk or read an article on enterprise software, I can&t help but give Commander Riker a little due credit.

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GeForce Now

Nvidia GeForce Now hit the streets like a month ago, and in what was a surprise to literally no one, it is the best game streaming service on the market right now. It's not without its flaws, though. 

For starters, it seems like all kinds of developers are suddenly pulling their games from the service, from AAA heavy hitters like Bethesda to Indie

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