Category: TECHNOLOGY
Sling TV continues to drop subscribers, loses 55K subscribers in second quarter
Dish reported today that its streaming service Sling TV declined in subscribers during the second quarter of 2022, with a net loss of 55,000. This significantly differs from the first quarter of 2022, when it lost 234,000 subscribers. However, this is the third straight quarter that it has seen a drop.
The figure was also less of a loss than Q2 2021, when Sling TV lost 65,000 subs. Now, Sling has a total of 2.197 million subscribers, a decrease of 242,000 from the 2.439 million in the second quarter last year. During the first quarter of 2022, Sling TV had a total of 2.252 million, for comparison.
The company wrote in a regulatory filing, “The decrease in net Sling TV subscribers was primarily related to higher subscriber disconnects following seasonal sports activity. We continue to experience increased competition, including competition from other subscription video-on-demand and live-linear OTT service providers.”
While Sling TV is considered one of the first live TV streaming services, launching in 2015, it still has yet to beat Google in the streaming wars. YouTube TV continues to be a live TV streaming service to watch after revealing that it topped the 5 million subscriber mark, which included those on trials. Disney reported during its Q1 2022 report that Hulu Live TV had 4.3 million subscribers — but it only includes paid subscribers in its numbers.
Sling TV still beats FuboTV, which has 1.05 million subscribers. Philo has around 800,000 subs.
The company has been focusing on retaining customers with new content, such as the free Elvis Presley Channel, which launched in June. Also, in July, Sling TV provided customers free previews to premium streaming services via its “Freeview Weekends,” which include AMC+, EPIX, Sundance Now, Hallmark Movies Now and more.
Electronic Arts Posts Higher Sales, Profit
The videogame company’s quarterly results topped expectations on the strength of soccer and racing games. …read more
Lucid Motors slashes EV production targets again as supply chain problems persist
EV automaker Lucid Motors slashed its annual production guidance in half on Wednesday due to what CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson described as “extraordinary supply chain and logistics challenges.”
Shares of Lucid fell more than 12% in after-market trading following the release of its second-quarter earnings, in which it provided the production guidance.
Lucid lowered its production guidance from 12,000 to 14,000 vehicles to 6,000 and 7,000 vehicles for the year. That’s just a quarter of the 20,000 luxury Air sedans the company initially planned to produce n 2022. In February, Lucid adjusted that loftier goal down to 12,000 to 14,000 vehicles.
Lucid doesn’t appear to have a demand problem. The company reported it has more than 37,000 reservations for its Air sedan, a 23% increase from just a few months ago. It has failed to capitalize on that demand, delivering just 679 vehicles in the second quarter. In the first half of the year, Lucid produced 1,405 vehicles and delivered 1,039 of them.
“Our revised production guidance reflects the extraordinary supply chain and logistics challenges we encountered,” said Rawlinson said in a statement.
Rawlinson attempted to soothe investors’ concerns during the earnings call with analysts, emphasizing that the company has identified the primary bottlenecks and have already taken steps to begin to remedy the situation. He added that Lucid is bringing its logistics operations in-house.
“I’m right here on the front line,” Rawlinson said as part of his prepared remarks ahead of questions from analysts. “And I’ve been spending the vast majority of my time here, right here on the shop floor. I believe it’s my responsibility as the CEO to be here resolving issues and helping to onboard the new executives.”
Lucid also announced that it has hired longtime Stellantis employee Steven David as senior vice president of operations, a position that encompasses supply chain, logistics, manufacturing, and quality. David, who has three decades of experience in manufacturing and operations, most recently headed up Stellantis’s component operations.
Lucid reported it generated $97.3 million in revenue in the second quarter. While the company, which went public last year, did see its Q2 revenue pop from $57.6 million in revenue in the first quarter and just $174,000 in the same period last year, it was still far below analysts’ expectations.
Analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance expected revenue …read more
India withdraws personal data protection bill that alarmed tech giants
The Indian government is withdrawing its long-awaited Personal Data Protection Bill that drew scrutiny from several privacy advocates and tech giants who feared the legislation could restrict how they managed sensitive information while giving government broad powers to access it.
The move comes as a surprise as lawmakers had indicated recently that the bill, unveiled in 2019, could see the “light of the day” soon. New Delhi received dozen of amendments and recommendations from a Joint Committee of Parliament that “identified many issues that were relevant but beyond the scope of a modern digital privacy law,” said India’s Junior IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
The government will now work on a “comprehensive legal framework” and present a new bill, he added.
The Personal Data Protection Bill sought to empower Indian citizens with rights relating to their data. India, the world’s second largest internet market, has seen an explosion of personal data in the past decade as hundreds of citizens came online for the first time and started consuming scores of apps. But there has been uncertainty on how much power the individuals, private companies and government agencies have over it.
“The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 was deliberated in great detail by the Joint Committee of Parliament 81 amendments were proposed and 12 recommendations were made towards comprehensive legal framework on digital ecosystem. Considering the report of the JCP, a comprehensive legal framework is being worked upon. Hence, in the circumstances, it is proposed to withdraw. The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019′ and present a new bill that fits into the comprehensive legal framework,” India’s IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in a written statement Wednesday.
The bill drew criticism from many industry stakeholders. New Delhi-based privacy advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation said the bill “provides large exemptions to government departments, prioritises the interests of big corporations, and does not adequately respect your fundamental right to privacy.”
Meta, Google and Amazon were some of the companies that had expressed concerns about some of the recommendations by the joint parliamentary committee on the proposed bill.
The bill also mandated that companies may only store certain categories of “sensitive” and “critical” data including financial, health and biometric information in India.
“I hope that the bill isn’t junked altogether, given all the work that went into it. Junking the bill altogether will create a limbo of sorts from a privacy protection standpoint. Nobody wants that,” said Nikhil Pahwa, the editor of MediaNama, which covers policy and media, in a series of posts on Twitter.
“The new bill should be put up for public consultation. Government should realise that civil society and wider industry participation helps improve laws and rules. The JPC didn’t involve many key civil society stakeholders. Govt has already made a mess with IT Rules 2021 and CERT-in directions. It needs to be reasonable with regulations else this will hurt India’s digital future.”
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/india-government-to-withdraw-personal-data-protection-bill/
This is how edited tweets might look when embedded elsewhere
While Twitter hasn’t officially released its much-anticipated edit tweet feature yet, one lingering question has been how they would look as embeds on other sites. Would they dynamically change when edited on Twitter, or would they remain as they were when created? OR would Twitter introduce something radical alongside or instead of either of those options? Given how often tweets get embedded elsewhere, the answer to this question takes on nearly philosophical proportions.
Well, we now have an idea about how edited tweets might look like when a site embeds them, thanks to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong.
According to screenshots she posted this week, embedded tweets will have markers indicating if the author has edited the tweet after the site posted it, keeping the original text intact.
Wong presented a couple of scenarios about how embeds and the edit tweet function will work with each other. The first scenario shows a site embedding an already-edited tweet with the timestamp of the last edit. The second scenario shows a tweet that’s been edited after the site embedded it; the original version will show a “There’s a new version of the tweet” label under the edited tweet with a link to redirect readers to the latest version — on Twitter itself.
Embeds are important because they give users a chance to interact with Twitter even if they are not registered on the site. Plus, a lot of news reports rely on tweets, and if the content represented in a tweet changes, it might affect the whole story. Twitter has struggled with the formatting of embedded tweets that were removed after they were posted on a site. Earlier this year, it started showing a blank tweet embed box instead of blockquote when an embedded tweet was removed. The company said this change was to respect the author’s wish to remove, and it is working on showing a better message instead of a blank box for deleted tweets.
This would be helpful for news sites, giving them a trail, and a record, of what an account or a person originally said even if the tweet is edited later.
Regardless of how embedded tweets might look, in another edit tweet-related find, reverse engineer Nima Owji discovered that Twitter appears to be working on limited functionality for …read more
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/this-is-how-edited-tweets-might-look-when-embedded-elsewhere/
Braxia buys KetaMD to get into remote-delivered ketamine treatments
Braxia Scientific is a Toronto-based company that focuses on depression, suicidality and related mental health conditions. Today, the company announced it is buying KetaMD to extend its telehealth prowess and in particular to expand its tech-facilitated ketamine-based treatments from its current local market of Florida into the wider U.S. The deal is worth around $6 million, the company told TechCrunch.
KetaMD’s telemedicine platform provides access to affordable at-home ketamine treatments for people suffering from anxiety, depression and related mental health conditions. The company’s treatments are medically supervised, guided virtually by registered nurses with mental health expertise, and backed by psychiatrists and depression researchers. KetaMD’s integration of ketamine and telemedicine is guided by best practices and treatment guidance.
With the acquisition of KetaMD, Braxia provides a compelling and differentiated value proposition. KetaMD’s innovative technology capabilities provide Braxia the logistics and know-how to offer patient-centric treatments, both in-person and delivered through digital telehealth.
“Today marks a notable step forward in bringing awareness, accessibility and scalability of the benefits of ketamine and psychedelics generally for those suffering from depression and other mood disorders,” Dr. Roger McIntyre, CEO, Braxia Scientific said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We’ve seen improved outcomes firsthand from ketamine treatment in our clinics and in our clinical trials. Adding digital telehealth capabilities through KetaMD’s highly anticipated online and mobile platform strengthens our position to lead the medical use of evidence-based psychedelics, while accelerating our ability to get treatment to those in need, safely and quickly across the U.S. and Canada, and globally in the future.”
KetaMD is currently available in the state of Florida, but a roll-out to other key states is planned. Specifically, the company is gearing up to launch its offering in California, New York, Texas, Colorado and Washington this year, and plans to continue to expand throughout the United States. The KetaMD brand will remain as a standalone brand under the Braxia umbrella.
Under the terms of the share purchase agreement, Braxia acquired 100% of the common stock of KetaMD in exchange for 42 million Braxia common shares. After market close, Braxia shares were trading at around $0.049 per share, so the deal is worth around $2 million, plus an additional $1 million or so worth of “Earnout Shares” in five years based on certain performance targets. The somewhat complex deal is worth a max total of $6.3 million, the company notes.
Google now lets merchants add an ‘Asian-owned’ label to their profiles on Maps and Search
Google announced today that it’s adding a new label on Maps and Search that will allow people to identify their business as being Asian-owned. The new label is now available to merchants in the United States with a verified business profile on Google. Once a business adds the label on their Business Profile, users will be able to see the attribute on Search on Maps.
Today’s update builds on the Black-owned, Latino-owned, veteran-owned, women-owned and LGBTQ+ owned business attributes that Google already offers. The company says the new label is another way people can support a diversity of businesses across its products.
On a support page, Google notes that self-identification is optional and is currently only available to retailers based in the United States. Customers are able to filter for businesses using the identity attributes. Merchants can add labels to their business profile by logging into their Merchant Center and navigating to the “Business information” page. From there, you need to find the “About your business” tab and scroll down to the “Business identity attributes.” You can then click the toggle button next to the identity you want to add.
“It’s our hope the Asian-owned attribute brings people together and provides our communities with much-needed recognition: to help them be seen and thrive,” said Leanne Luce, a product manager at Google, in a blog post. “We are excited to spotlight Asian-owned businesses and highlight part of what makes our community unique and important.”
Google says it’s also committed to building up Asian-owned businesses’ digital skills. The company has partnered with the US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce (USPAACC) to help Asian-owned small businesses grow over the past few years and has helped more than 20,000 Asian-owned businesses. Today, Google is expanding this partnership to help an additional 10,000 Asian-owned small businesses gain digital skills to help them grow their businesses.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/google-asian-owned-label-profiles-maps-search/
ZayZoon charges employees $5 to get paid sooner
In spite of the so-called Great Resignation, wages haven’t risen as dramatically as some economists anticipated. About 41% of workers recently surveyed by Willis Towers Watson say that they’re living paycheck to paycheck, while the Bureau of Economic Advisers reports that personal savings rates reached a seven-year low in April — reflecting the dire financial situation many workers find themselves in.
Tate Hackert, the CEO of Calgary-based ZayZoon, asserts inflexible pay schedules are a major contributor to the inequity. That’s one of the reasons he founded ZayZoon, he says — so that workers can access pay when bills come due rather than on a fixed schedule.
To grow the business, ZayZoon today closed a $12.5 million funding round co-led by Carpe Diem Investments and Alpenglow Capital with participation from InterGen Capital, Prairie Merchant Corporation, and several angel investors. Alongside a $13 million loan from ATB Financial, the proceeds bring ZayZoon’s total raised capital to date to $25 million.
“Saving every penny I made, at the age of 16, I provided mortgage financing to a family friend in return for interest payments,” Hackert told TechCrunch in an email interview. “The same patterns emerged — people with relatively [good] incomes that needed a small amount of capital for a small amount of time just to get by … I sought out to create a product that could help employees in their most vulnerable moments, while staying socially responsible and true to a mission of improving their overall financial health.”
ZayZoon’s platform allows small- and medium-sized businesses to implement what’s known as an earned wage access (EWA) program. EWA gives employees access to some of their accrued wages before the end of their payroll cycle. Workers still receive the entirety of their paycheck at the end of each cycle. However, the advancements made are subtracted from the direct deposit account.
ZayZoon funds early wage requests itself to mitigate risk on the employer side. The service is free for companies to use, but ZayZoon charges workers a $5 fee to choose how much of their wages they’d like to access (up to $200). Companies can opt — but aren’t required — to subsidize the benefit.
Funding requests are disbursed “within minutes” to employees’ accounts, or workers can sign up for a ZayZoon-branded Visa card that acts like a prepaid debit card. Whether or not they decide to go the prepaid route, workers can link ZayZoon to their bank accounts for spending insights in addition to alerts of overdraft and minimum account balance fees.
“Employers assume implementing an EWA program takes immense effort, but ZayZoon can fully activate a business in less than 1 hour, with the majority taking less than a few minutes,” Hackert said. “Over 3,000 businesses offer ZayZoon to their staff today … Depending on the industry and employee demographics, it’s typical for a business that rolls out ZayZoon to have 25% to 45% of their workforce accessing ZayZoon regularly.”
ZayZoon claims that Sonic, McDonald’s, Domino’s, and Hilton franchisees are among its customers.
ZayZoon …read more
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/zayzoon-charges-employees-5-to-get-paid-sooner/
Ticketmaster, TikTok partner to give users a new way to discover and purchase event tickets
Ticketmaster and TikTok are partnering to launch an in-app feature that lets users discover events through the popular short-form video app. With this new partnership, TikTok users will be able to buy tickets for events they’re interested in directly through TikTok. Creators can now search for relevant Ticketmaster events and add destination links to their videos. Ticketmaster says the new feature will only be available to select creators at launch and will scale to more users over time.
Eligible creators can now select the “Add link” option after tapping and selecting the new Ticketmaster option before posting a video. Creators can then search for any event on Ticketmaster and then select “Add to video” to add the link. Once creators share their video, it will display the event link on the bottom-left to allow viewers to click and purchase tickets via an in-app browser.
Image Credits: Ticketmaster
Ticketmaster says it wants to reach fans on the platforms they use the most, which includes TikTok. The company also says the partnership will empower event organizers and creators to reach ticket buyers in a new way. Many artists and personalities have already signed on to begin using the ticketing mini app including Demi Lovato, OneRepublic, Usher, the Backstreet Boys, WWE and more, Ticketmaster says.
Ticketmaster’s partnership with TikTok comes five months after it launched a new way for users to discover live entertainment events on Snapchat. The feature matches users with events they might be interested in based on their preferences. If you find something you’re interested in, you can see if your friends have matched the same event. Once you’ve decided on an event, you’re redirected to Ticketmaster’s website to purchase tickets.
The company’s partnership with TikTok is part of its mission to continually improve how fans discover events on the platforms they interact with the most. Ticketmaster’s partnerships with TikTok and Snapchat show that it’s looking to find ways to reach younger users and get them interested in events they may have otherwise not known about.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/ticketmaster-tiktok-partnership/
Thousands of Solana wallets drained in multimillion dollar exploit
Solana, an increasingly popular blockchain known for its speedy transactions, has become the target of the crypto sphere’s latest hack after users reported that funds have been drained from internet-connected “hot” wallets.
An unknown actor drained funds from 7,767 wallets on the Solana network as of 5am UTC on Wednesday, Solana’s Status Twitter account said. However, blockchain security firm SlowMist’s crypto tracker identified that more than 8,000 wallets had been drained. It’s estimated the loss so far is around $8 million.
The attack – which has only affected only “hot” wallets or wallets that are always connected to the internet, allowing people to store and send tokens easily – does not appear to be limited to Solana. Justin Barlow, an investor at Solana Ventures, reported that his USDC balance was drained as well. Crypto analyst @0xfoobar confirmed that “the attacker is stealing both native tokens (SOL) and SPL tokens (USDC)… affecting wallets that have been inactive for less than 6 months.”
The attack has compromised other wallets including Phantom, Slope, Solflare, and TrustWallet. Wallets drained should be treated as compromised and abandoned, Solana warned as it encouraged users to switch to hardware or “cold” wallets.
Phantom, a fast-growing Solana-based wallet that hit $1.2 billion in valuation in January, said it’s “working closely with other teams to get to the bottom of a reported vulnerability in the Solana ecosystem.”
“At this time, the team does not believe this is a Phantom-specific issue,” the wallet developer says.
Slope added that it is “actively working to sort out the issue as rapidly as possible and rectify best we can”, while non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Magic Eden called on users to revoke permissions for any suspicious links in their Phantom wallets.
The cause of the attack remains unclear, but industry leaders including Emin Gün Sirer, founder of another popular blockchain Avalanche, pointed out that the transactions were properly signed, which means the vulnerability could be a “supply chain attack” that manages to steal users’ private keys. @0xfoobar added that “it’s likely something has caused widespread private key compromise”, and warned that revoking wallet approvals will probably not help.
Solana spokesperson Chris Kraeuter declined to answer our questions but referred us to Solana’s Status Twitter account, which states that the company’s engineers “are currently working with multiple security researchers and ecosystem teams to identify the root cause of the exploit, which is unknown at this time.”
The Solana attack comes just hours after malicious actors abused a “chaotic” security exploit to steal almost $200 million in digital assets from cross-chain messaging protocol Nomad. The “free-for-all” attack, which saw more than 41 addresses drain $152 million — 80% of the stolen funds – was made possible by a recent update to one of Nomad’s smart contracts that made it easy for users to spoof transactions.
This is a developing story.