Who Cares What I Think (WCWIT) #17 : Launch Ticker Weekend Highlights…
Jason “@jason” Calacanis’ just plain excellent record of producing some seriously decent, useful content continues in his tech news feed, “Launch Ticker”. Sign up. This is one of the only newsletters I’ve ever actually read, let alone find incredibly useful, distilled and engrossing enough to quickly shape my macro tech thoughts — daily.
1. Adios, Muchachas
Nick Denton posts a final story to Gawker as it shuts down; Denton says Peter Thiel achieved his objectives while “reframing the debate on his terms”; he goes on to profile the history of Gawker and its associated websites, suggesting the company tried to push back against “the system,” but ultimately failed — Link
Wow. Dunzo. Also interesting was his “Open Letter to Peter Thiel”, wherein he blames everyone else in the journalism and tech industries for ganging up on him for, like, no reason you guys!
Hoping this signifies the beginning of the end for the dominance of clickbait, abusive, fluff, unsubstantiated, intrusive, misleading, “journalism” that calls to the basest, knee-jerk reactions in us — and the start of a new era of super critical, substantiated, crowd sourced, crowd critiqued press.
2. Strap In, Y’all, It’s Beginning…
Alphabet’s human longevity R&D entity, Calico, to develop computational and deep learning tools for analyzing biological and medical data sets; newly appointed Chief Computing Officer Daphne Koller will build a team to conduct experiments to better understand factors in mortality — Link
This is just super exciting. Oh my god. I’m so excited. They’re doing it… As medical data platforms, 23&me, wearable biometric readers, etc. all begin to transition from novelty to ubiquity, the virtual machines we build will barely have to (virtually) lift a (virtual) finger to uncover whole paradigms of physiological algorithms on the core functions of life…
Should be neat.
3. We Are The VR Troopers
Google is investing in a raft of VR films and programming to debut on Daydream in the coming weeks, according to Bloomberg; purportedly includes content from YouTube stars and more; various other firms are seemingly also set to launch VR-compatible apps, including HBO, Hulu, NBA, MLB and others — Link
Daydream, at once ominous and approachable, is starting to look like a project that’ll take at least novel form pretty soon here. I may skip the Beta stages, though, until they work out those motion sickness design kinks.
4. Don’t Play With Matches
WikiLeaks has exposed sensitive information relating to hundreds of regular citizens, according to the Associated Press; the whistleblower site is accused of naming teenage rape victims, as well as revealing a Saudi man as gay, punishable by death in the country; follows previous claims of irresponsible leaks — Link
Well… This is pretty unconscionable. I hope, at least, they can’t sleep at night with having done this, and they’ll begin to self regulate, so that the lives of the innocent are not so trivially destroyed like this in the future.
Hopefully nonprofits and good samaritans the world over are offering support and defense for those effected.
5. Yeah… Nah…
Google, Facebook and Twitter push back against Dept. of Homeland Security proposals which may require some US visitors provide access to their social media accounts; objections come via the Internet Association trade group, which suggests other countries would follow suit and could have human rights implications — Link
In no world would granting that power turn out well. Every single human on Earth cannot bear the punishments & precautions aimed at the extremely rare, anomalous, destructive sociopaths of the world. Not worth it, not a fair trade, no deal.
6. Your Email To “Grandma” Scored: Garbage
Gmail plugin Boomerang launches Respondable, an AI-powered email composition tool; aims to help users create improved messages by providing ratings and feedback as they type — Link
The UX looks meh, but I’m really curious. Probably scanning every word for ad-tools opportunities, but, so long as I’m not typing about my secret inventions and world domination plans, this should be fine.
As a matter of fact, I welcome better ad targeting, so I don’t have to see any more useless, terrible, space-wasting ads in my browsing experience anyway.
7. Pinterest Is Still a Thing?
Pinterest acquires bookmarking service Instapaper; terms undisclosed; includes tech and majority of team; apps will continue to operate under the Instapaper brand, but the developer product Instaparser will shut down Nov 1 — Link
Is it just for weddings, teenagers looking for heath shake recipes, and girls planning parties in the Hamptons — or is it still totally a thing, but I’ve just been out of the loop?
I’ve been seeing a lot of acquisitional activity from them lately, so not sure if it’s all symptomatic of a scaling phase or the death throes of a platform rapidly reaching marginal status.
8. Amazon Warehouses Will Soon Require Less Idle Ambulences
Autonomous industrial vehicles company Seegrid raises $25M from Giant Eagle, others; provides vision-guided pallet trucks and tow tractors for handling materials in manufacturing and distribution facilities; clients include Daimler and Jaguar Land Rover; raised $53M to date — Link
If you’ve read your Bastiat, you know this is a win-win-win innovation. Get humans out of situations where their minds are off and their risk for serious injury are up — and into designing the future and enjoying life.
India stuck to the looms in the 1850s to maintain labor where they were familiar with it, and it set them back into the dark ages, economically. Now that they are embracing and massively contributing to the modern marketplace, they are not only leading much of the infrastructure and culture of technology, but their populace is less and less relegated to the disenfranchisement of abject poverty.
Open a food truck, partner with a friend and kickstart something, work with a boutique hand-crafted operation, but let go of the 1950s labor economy & scoot off that forklift, we’ve got better things to do.
9. Gamify All The Things… But, Like, Actually
Contextual mobile advertising company MediaBrix raises $6.5M from Edison, Revel and Horizon Technology; provides interactive ads with rewards for achievements; sells across networks; raised $18M to date — Link
This is actually great (sounding), despite the worst case scenarios depicted above. I’ve been involved with some similar IRL gamification of utility & advertising recently, and see this era as a huge improvement over the 1800s style ads-made-digital we’ve been dealing with exclusively, ’til recently.
10. I Can Show You The World — Shining, Shimmering Splendiiiid…
Parrot’s $1.3k fixed-wing drone launches in Sept; the user launches Disco by throwing it; the drone automatically ascends to 164 feet and circles; the user can then take control with the handheld Skycontroller 2; Cockpit glasses give the pilot a first-person perspective with overlaid flight data — Link
Those goggles tho. Slap on a pair of those babies, lay belly down on a hammock, with a fan pointed at ya, have a buddy toss that thing off the roof, and shoot… There’s a pretty sweet Saturday afternoon, I tell you what.
11. This Actually Looks Exciting
Sony announces PlayStation Now for Windows PCs; the video game streaming service is currently limited to Sony and some Samsung products; $20 monthly subscription, features hundreds of PlayStation 3 titles; also announced DualShock 4 wireless USB adaptor — Link
So all I need is this USB stick & I can start playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 again? Listen to the radio & drive around in the rain in GTA: Vice City?
I’m game.
12. We’re All Mobile Friendly
Google removes “mobile friendly” label from mobile search results, down-ranks pages with intrusive interstitial ads; the company says 85 percent of pages returned meet mobile friendly criteria, so the label is no longer needed — Link
Neat.
Nice algorithmic UX encouraging the stragglers to get their acts together as well. Despite recent allegations that Google’s abusing their SEO powers to slant the pool of available political opinion & information — they still do a pretty good job at their core.
13. Neurodiversity Eff Tee Dubs
Santa Monica-based MindSpark employs autistic adults for enterprise software testing and bug hunting; unemployment is high for the autistic population, but many members demonstrate characteristics ideal for testing, including attention to detail and sustained focus; clients include For Networks and Liberty Mutual — Link
This is fantastic. Tyler Cowen, noted & prolific economist, wrote a book advocating for the economic and cultural sense this makes, that I highly recommend (along with pretty much everything else he’s every written), or you can watch/listen to him speak on the topic, for the media-centric multi-taskers among us.
14. Wait, Wuuuuuuut… Is This For Trump?
Hackers thought to be sponsored by Russian intelligence target reporters at The New York Times and other US news organizations, according to CNN sources; the FBI and other US agencies are investigating; reportedly linked to cyberattacks on the Democratic Party — Link
Conspiracy theory time. Gut reaction, Putin is sicking his boys on Hillary to get his BFF in macho tyranny into office. What other reason is there for this? Lots, probably, but, legitimately, tweet / DM me with your thoughts or intel, if ya got some.
15. When Breaking The Internet Doesn’t Scale
Pokémon GO’s popularity is on the decline, according to Axiom Capital Management; data from multiple sources indicate app downloads, daily active users, engagement and time spent playing have all dropped significantly since initial spike, which broke records — Link
Yeah. I’d been hearing that they’d gotten rid of some of the core engaging functionality in order to speed up processing and/or place less of a data usage burden on users.
That seems to have killed the core FOMO drive of the thing — that or the idea of hunting Pokémon IRL just got old fast.
Week-to-Date Funding Roundup :
10 Deals
$130,000,000
.
.
LendUp
consumer banking and loans: $47.5M Series C from Y Combinator.
Seegrid
develops vision-guided autonomous vehicles:$25M undisclosed from Giant Eagle.
Sample6
pathogen detection system for food: $12.5M Series C from Acre Venture Partners.
ThreatQuotient
threat intelligence platform for enterprise:$12M Series B from New Enterprise Associates.
Logikcull
cloud platform to share court-related information: $10M undisclosed from OpenView.
MediaBrix
enables emotion-based brand marketing on mobile: $6.5M undisclosed from Edison Partners, Revel Partners, Horizon Technology Finance.
Centricient
B2C cloud messaging platform: $6.5M undisclosed from Venrock.
Radar
security software for healthcare: $6.2M Series A from undisclosed.
RedShelf
online marketplace for college textbooks: $4M Series B from Coniston Capital.
Banyan Technology
provides software for truck-based shipping: $2M undisclosed from River SaaS Capital.
Phlur
online gender-neutral fragrance brand: $1.8M undisclosed from Next Coast Ventures.
If we missed anything, post a comment on our public sheet or email fundings@launch.co.
Again, definitely, definitely subscribe to J-Cal’s Launch Ticker for more information, less uninformed exposition, updated daily @ launchticker.com
Tweet me at @ElizabethHunker to yell praise / threats / dadaist riffs at me on this post, or life in general.
