Social impact in the age of AI must take on a new dimension: the creation of large numbers of service jobs for displaced workers.
Source: Wired
The company reportedly has no plans for a successor to its handheld.
Source: CNET
Omobola Johnson (Image: Flickr/World Economic Forum under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
TechCrunch Startup Battlefield is returning to Africa in December, this time in Lagos, Nigeria. We will have a day-long program full of our flagship Battlefield competition highlighting the best startups that Africa has to offer.
Not only that, we’ll have panel discussions designed to explore the continent’s rapidly developing technological infrastructure on the continent. To wit, I’m excited to announce the first two speakers who will don our stage with direct knowledge about investing Silicon Valley money in the local ecosystem.
Omobola Johnson is a senior partner at TLcom Capital and the former minister of communication technology for Nigeria. Her vast knowledge about the startup investing landscape comes from her 25-year tenure at Accenture where she served as the managing director.
As ICT minister, she focused on the execution of the National Broadband Plan, as well as promoting government interest in local venture capital through the development of a fund and a network of startup incubators. And at Accenture, she advised numerous startups in various industries on how to become competitive and help to strengthen the tech landscape.
Lexi Novitske
Lexi Novitske is the principal investment officer for Singularity Investments where she is responsible for managing investments in the firm’s Africa portfolio.
Novitske moved to Africa from the United States, having identified a unique approach to providing African startups with the capital necessary to thrive. Big surprise: It’s not just about writing a check and hoping for returns. It’s about understanding the complexities of the environment, modifying Western attitudes about business and working hard with your companies to ensure the best outcomes.
Johnson and Novitske are just the beginning of what we have to offer at Battlefield Africa technology. Stay tuned for more announcements of great speakers and get your tickets before they sell out.
Source: TechCrunch
The earliest adopters of Bitcoin — the libertarian anarchist “cypherpunk” crowd — were mostly men. Today, roughly a decade after Satoshi Nakamoto’s famed white paper was released, the majority of cryptocurrency holders are still men.
This poses a problem for the companies betting on the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency. At this point, they’ve already tapped into that core base of Bitcoin enthusiasts, namely Millenial men. But how do they reach more women? Or Gen Xers? Or Baby Boomers?
Crypto finance company Circle thinks accessible, educational resources are the answer. As of today, the company has added a new feature (pictured above) to their crypto investing app, Circle Invest. Their hope is that simple, jargon-free explainers — sort of a ‘Cryptocurrencies for Dummies’ built into the app — will make it easier for new demographics to get their foot in the door of the crypto universe and learn a thing or two along the way.
“A lot of the apps that exist on the market are geared toward folks that understand the market already and unfortunately, that tends to be men,” Circle’s head of product Divya Agarwalla told TechCrunch.
The inspiration for the new feature came after the results of a study showed a serious lack of diversity among crypto investors. The study, commissioned by Circle, surveyed 3,000 Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers in the U.S. and found that Millennial men are more than twice as likely to invest in crypto in the next year.
For anyone that has attended a blockchain event or crypto conference, this probably isn’t news. According to Coin.dance, roughly 95 percent of Bitcoin “community engagement” comes from men.
A strategic attempt to tap into a new user base is a natural step for Circle, which has long had ambitions of becoming the PayPal (and Venmo) of cryptocurrency.
Most people are familiar with Circle’s consumer-facing payments app, Circle Pay, though the company also operates a trading desk called Circle Trade, as well as Poloniex, another exchange platform the company tacked on via its acquisition of the company of the same name earlier this year. That deal, according to Fortune, was worth some $400 million.
Circle has raised about $250 million in venture capital funding to date from IDG Capital, Breyer Capital, General Catalyst, Accel, Digital Currency Group, Pantera, Blockchain Capital, Goldman Sachs, Tusk Ventures and more. A $110 million round in May valued the company at $3 billion.
Source: TechCrunch
Does deeper data produce perfect matches? Facebook is finally ready to find out, starting today with a country-wide test in Colombia of its new Dating feature. It’s centered around an algorithm-powered homescreen of Suggested romantic matches based on everything Facebook knows about you that other apps don’t. There’s no swiping and it’s not trying to look cool, but Facebook Dating is familiar and non-threatening enough to feel accessible to Facebook’s broad array of single users.
Originally announced at F8 in May, Facebook has hammered out details like limiting users to expressing interest in a maximum of 100 people per day, spotlighting personal questions as well as photos, and defaulting to show you friends-of-friends as well as strangers unless you only want to see people with no mutual connections. If the test goes well, expect Facebook to roll Dating out to more countries shortly as the social network pushes its mission to create meaningful connections and the perception that it can be a force of good.
“The goal of the team is to make Facebook simply the best place to start a relationship online” Facebook Dating’s product manager Nathan Sharp told me during an expansive interview about the company’s strategy and how it chose to diverge from the top dating apps. For starters, it’s not trying to compete with Tinder for where you find hookups by swiping through infinite options, but instead beat eHarmony, Hinge, and OKCupid at finding you a life partner. And it’s all about privacy, from its opt-in nature to how it’s almost entirely siloed from Facebook though lives within the same app.
“We wanted to make a product that encouraged people to remember that there are people behind the profiles and the cards that they’re seeing. We wanted a system that emphasizes consideration over impulse. We want you to consider more than that person’s profile photo.”
Though Facebook could surely earn a ton off of Facebook Dating if it gets popular, for now there are no plans to monetize it with ads or premium subscriptions to bonus features. But as Facebook strives to stay relevant beyond the aging News Feed and combat its branding crisis, there are plenty of incentives for it to find us a significant other.
“Dating is something we’ve seen on the platform since the earliest days. We know there are 200 million people who list themselves as single” says Sharp. He’s married himself but says with a laugh that Facebook Dating “is definitely a young and single team.” Back in 2004, online dating still had a sleazy reputation. But now that over a third of U.S. marriages start online, and Facebook has had time to identify the pitfalls stumbled into by other dating apps, it’s ready to pucker up.
The basic flow is that users 18 and up (or the local ‘Adult’ equivalent) will see a notice atop their News Feed inviting them to try Facebook Dating when it comes to their country, and they’ll see a shortcut in their bookmarks menu. For now Facebook Dating is mobile-only, and will is bundled into the social network’s main iOS and Android apps.
They’ll opt in, verify their city using their phone’s location services, and decide whether to add details like a free-form bio, workplace, education, religion, height, and if they have children. Facebook offers non-binary genders and sexual orientations. To fill out their profile, they’ll choose up to a dozen photos they upload, are tagged in, previously posted to Facebook, or cross-posted from Instagram as well as answer up to 20 questions about their personality such as “What does your perfect day look like?” or “What song always makes you sing along? How loud?”
Users can select to filter their matches by distance (up to a maximum radius of 100 kilometers), if they have children, religion, height, and age. They may then browse through the homescreen’s Suggested matches list, or they can choose to ‘Unlock’ Events and Groups they’re part of to see people from those who’ve done the same. Anyone you’ve blocked on Facebook won’t show up, though unfriended exs might. To see the next person, they either have to say they’re not interested, or choose a photo or question from the person’s profile and send them a message related to it (or at least they’re supposed to), and afterwards the sender can’t see the recipient any more.
The text and emoji-only messages go through a special Facebook Dating chat section, not Messenger, and land in the recipient’s Interested tab with no read receipts. If they reply, the chat moves to both people’s Conversations tab. From there they can decide to connect elsewhere online or meet up in person.
Sharp admits that “The moment you try to control the system you may have some unexpected behaviors occur there”. Facebook thought ahead so you can’t message photos (dick pics), you’re supposed to tie your message to a piece of their content (fewer generic pick-up lines), and you can’t follow up with people who don’t respond to you (stalking). But the company plans to stay vigilant in case unexpected forms of abuse or privacy issues emerge. Overall, Facebook managed to pull off Dating without any glaring privacy snafus or other obvious missteps.
Starting today, users in Colombia will be able to create a Facebook Dating profile, but the company won’t start serving matches until there are enough sign ups. Sharp tells me “we don’t expect it to take months.” But why Colombia? He says it’s because much of South America has culturally accepted online dating, it has a sizeable population of 30 million monthly active Facebook users, and the social network can track data out of a few discrete metropolitan areas.
But there are a lot of other ‘whys’ to how Facebook Dating was built. Sharp ran me through the decision making process his team undertook to turn Facebook Dating from a concept into a concrete product. Here I’ll run through its rules and features while explaining the philosophy behind them:
A prototype of Facebook Dating’s onboarding flow
The end result is an online dating product that maximizes convenience, both in where it’s available and how much hunting you have to do by yourself. It’s distinctly one-size-fits-all to the point that it risks being seen as universally embarassing. Luckily only other Dating users can tell if you’re on it and there’s no way to search for someone specific, but there’s still the threat of humilating screenshots surfacing. It will be fascinating to see how Facebook Dating’s marketing strategy and style develops.
Facebook’s real advantage in this market will be its near-bottomless trove of personal data about all of us. It could analyze trends in characteristics of people who list themselves in a relationship together or what kinds of people respond to what kinds of people’s friend requests or messages. For matching, it could pair people who check in to similar locations or whose GPS paths cross, singles who Like similar bands or restaurants, or those who watch the same kinds of viral videos or share links from the same news outlet. Apps like Tinder can only scratch the surface with partnerships like its one with Foursquare to power its new Places matches. Turning all this info into insights about who’d like who will be a massive challenge for Facebook’s data scientists.
The big question remains how far Facebook will go to making Dating a hit. The feature could live or die by whether Facebook is willing to constantly nag its single users to sign-up. Without the gamification of swiping for fun, Facebook Dating will have to rely on its utility. The company is in a precarious time for its brand, and may have trouble getting people to trust it with an even more sensitive part of their lives.
“As all the events of the past year have unfolded, it’s only underscored the importance of privacy” Sharp concludes. No one wants their dating profile ending up Cambridge Analytica’d. But if analyzing your every Like and link gives Facebook uncanny matching accuracy, word could travel fast if it’s how people find their soul-mates.
Source: TechCrunch
The social network, still grappling with how it handles users’ privacy, is getting ready to find you a date — but only if you live in Colombia.
Source: CNET
Facebook starts publicly testing its dating service with users in Colombia today.
Source: Wired
Cannabis could be a kinder exit strategy for crustaceans doomed to the dinner plate.
Source: CNET
Credit rating giant Equifax has been issued with the maximum possible penalty by the UK’s data protection agency for last year’s massive data breach.
Albeit, the fine is only £500,000 because the loss of customer data occurred when the UK’s prior privacy regime was in force — rather than the tough new data protection law, brought in via the EU’s GDPR, which allows for maximum penalties of as much as 4% of a company’s global turnover for the most serious data failures.
So, again, Equifax has managed to dodge worse consequences over the 2017 breach, despite the hack resulting from its own internal process failings after it failed to patch a server that was known to be vulnerable for months — thereby giving hackers a soft-spot to attack and swipe data on 147 million consumers.
Personal information that was lost or compromised in the 2017 Equifax breach included names and dates of birth, addresses, passwords, driving licence and financial details.
The UK data protection regulator is involved because up to 15 million UK citizens’ data was also breached in the attack. And while the hack compromised Equifax’s US systems, the UK citizens’ data was being processed in the US.
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said today that the UK arm of Equifax failed to take adequate steps to ensure its US parents was protecting this data.
Reporting the result of its investigation, the ICO said Equifax contravened five out of eight data protection principles of the Data Protection Act 1998 — including, failure to secure personal data; poor retention practices; and lack of legal basis for international transfers of UK citizens’ data.
“Equifax Ltd has received the highest fine possible under the 1998 legislation because of the number of victims, the type of data at risk and because it has no excuse for failing to adhere to its own policies and controls as well as the law,” said information commissioner Elizabeth Denham in a statement. “We are determined to look after UK citizens’ information wherever it is held.”
“The loss of personal information, particularly where there is the potential for financial fraud, is not only upsetting to customers, it undermines consumer trust in digital commerce. This is compounded when the company is a global firm whose business relies on personal data,” she added.
The regulator’s investigation, carried out in parallel with the UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, revealed multiple failures at the credit reference agency.
The ICO says it found that measures that should have been in place to manage personal information were “inadequate and ineffective”, and there were also “significant problems” with data retention, IT system patching, and audit procedures.
It flags the fact that the US Department of Homeland Security had warned Equifax Inc about a critical vulnerability as far back as March 2017, noting that “sufficient steps to address the vulnerability were not taken meaning a consumer facing portal was not appropriately patched”.
“Many of the people affected would not have been aware the company held their data; learning about the cyber attack would have been unexpected and is likely to have caused particular distress,” added Denham, emphasizing the reasons for the ICO to issue the maximum possible penalty for the breach.
The ICO also recently issued Facebook with the same level of fine for allowing user data on up to 87 million Facebook users to be scraped by a third party app which used it to try to build voter targeting models, selling this as a service to a political consultancy involved in US elections.
“Multinational data companies like Equifax must understand what personal data they hold and take robust steps to protect it,” she continued. “Their boards need to ensure that internal controls and systems work effectively to meet legal requirements and customers’ expectations. Equifax Ltd showed a serious disregard for their customers and the personal information entrusted to them, and that led to today’s fine.”
Equifax has responded with disappointment to the ICO’s decision. In a statement responding to the ICO’s ruling, a company spokesperson said: “We have received the Monetary Penalty Notice from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on Wednesday afternoon and are considering the detailed points made. Equifax has cooperated fully with the ICO throughout its investigation, and we are disappointed in the findings and the penalty.
“As the ICO makes clear in its report, Equifax has successfully implemented a broad range of measures to prevent the recurrence of such criminal incidents and it acknowledges the strengthened procedures which are now in effect. The criminal cyberattack against our US parent company last year was a pivotal moment for our company. We apologise again to any consumers who were put at risk.
“Data security and combatting criminal digital activity is an ongoing battle for all organisations that requires continued innovation and attention. We have acted and continue to act to make things right for consumers. They will always be our priority.”
The company points to a number of changes it says it has made in response to the incident to strengthen its policies and processes, and also highlights ongoing investments in infrastructure and corporate governance procedures, including hiring additional IT staff, which are intended to improve the resilience of its systems to hack attacks.
However it does concede that the breach itself was the result of internal process failings, given that a file containing historical consumer information which should have been deleted was not.
And the key point here is that the ICO’s decision is based on scrutinising exactly what happened that led to the breach occurring.
How a company has acted since a security crisis will be taken into consideration, as part of the overall picture, but having shut the barn door after the horse has bolted is only going to get so much credit vs the reasons for the barn door not being properly secured in the first place. And that’s as it should be given the point of data protection legislation is to encourage companies to prioritize security, not overlook it.
In the Equifax decision the ICO writes: “The Commissioner has also taken into account her underlying objective in imposing a monetary penalty notice, namely to promote compliance with the DPA [data protection act]. She considers that, given the nature, seriousness and potential consequences of the contravention arising in this case, that objective would not be adequately served by an unduly lenient penalty.”
Source: TechCrunch
Commentary: I hate myself for writing this, but I really want the next Halo game to have a Battle Royale mode. Hear me out here…
Source: CNET