Category: TECHNOLOGY
Yelp updates its Android app with a redesigned home feed and map-based search
Yelp updating its Android app to introduce a new vertical Home Feed and search results with maps for better restaurant discovery, following last year’s release of a similar update for Yelp’s iOS users.
The company said the new vertical feed features highlights from local businesses and popular dishes from the restaurants around you. Yelp also plans to soon feature user-generated content, like reviews, on the app’s home screen.
The Android redesign also brings an updated map to explore functionality to bring a visual element to search. This comes after Instagram rolled out a searchable map experience for place discovery last month.
The changes arrive at a time when younger generations are searching and discovering more places of business through social networks and visual content, instead of more traditional utility-like services. At a recent conference, for example, Google’s Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan noted that younger users are turning to apps like Instagram and TikTok to find new places.
Yelp’s new Home Feed design for Android Image Credits: Yelp
With the update, Yelp redesigned the sign-up page and business pages with a focus on highlighting photos. The company said it also made backend improvements for a snappier app experience.
“In addition to our improved homepage, search results, and business pages, we’ve also made significant enhancements on the backend to improve app load times, significantly reduce app errors, and provide a better overall app experience. Users can also expect to see new Android updates roll out faster in the future,” Yelp noted in a statement.
Yelp’s new update is rolling out to Android users in 900 U.S-based cities in the coming weeks.
Earlier this year, the company expanded its partnership with Hazel Analytics to show accurate health ratings across 700,000 business pages.
It’s paintbrushes at dawn as artists feel the pressure of AI-generated art
If you’ve been anywhere close to the interwebs recently, you’ll have heard of DALL-E and MidJourney. The types of art the neural networks can generate — and with a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the tech — means that we are facing a whole new world of hurt. Often the butt of tasteless jokes (How do you get a waiter’s attention? Call out “Hey, artist!?”), computer-generated art is another punchline in the “they took our jobs” narrative of human versus machine.
To me, the interesting part of this is that robots and machines taking certain jobs have been begrudgingly accepted, because the jobs are repetitive, boring, dangerous or just generally awful. Machines welding car chassis do a far better job, faster and safer, than humans ever could. Art, however, is another matter.
As with all technology, there’s going to be a time when you no longer trust your own eyes or ears; machines are going to learn and evolve at breakneck speed.
In the recent movie “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann puts a quote in Colonel Tom Parker’s mouth, saying that a great act “gives the audience feelings they weren’t sure they should enjoy.” To me, that’s one of the greatest quotes I’ve heard about art in a while.
Commercial art is nothing new; whether your mind goes to Pixar movies, music or the prints that come with the frames in Ikea, art has been peddled at great scale for a long time. But what it, by and large, has in common, is that it was created by humans who had a creative vision of sorts.
The picture at the top of this article was generated using MidJourney, as I fed the algorithm a slightly ludicrous prompt: A man dances as if Prozac was a cloud of laughter. As someone who’s had a lifetime of mental health wobbles, including somewhat severe depression and anxiety, I was curious what a machine would come up with. And, my goodness; none of these generated graphics are something I’d have conceptually come up with myself. But, not gonna lie, they did something to me. I feel more graphically represented by these machine-generated works of art than almost anything else I’ve seen. And the wild thing is, I did that. These illustrations weren’t drawn or conceptualized by me. All I did was type a bizarre prompt into Discord, but these images wouldn’t have existed if it hadn’t been for my hare-brained idea. Not only did it come up with the image at the top of this article, it spat out four completely different — and oddly perfect — illustrations of a concept that’s hard to wrap my head around:
It’s hard to put words to exactly what that means to conceptual illustrators around the world. When someone can, at the click of a button, generate artworks of anything, emulating any style, creating pretty much anything you can think of, in minutes — what does it mean to be an artist?
Over the past week or so, …read more
Microsoft launches Outlook Lite for low-powered Android phones
Microsoft has launched its lightweight Outlook Lite Android app, which is suitable for low-end Android devices and regions with data connectivity issues. The app has a download size of less than 5MB compared to more than 80MB (depending on the device) for the regular version.
The app is currently available in select countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. Microsoft said it will consider adding more countries to the list in the future. The company added this app to its Office 365 roadmap in June, so this launch hints toward a broader release.
Users can access emails, calendars, and contacts for Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live, MSN, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Exchange Online accounts.
The firm claims that the Outlook Lite app is suitable to run on devices with less than 1GB RAM, and 2G or 3G network connectivity. It said that the app is also optimized to consume less battery.
“With Outlook Lite, our goal is to make Outlook more accessible to users who are on lightweight mobile devices across the world empowering them to achieve more,” the company said in a blog post.
Microsoft joins a plethora of lightweight apps designed by other companies meant for low-powered Android devices including Facebook Lite, Instagram Lite, TikTok Lite, Spotify Lite, and Pinterest Lite.
Microsoft is also testing a new Outlook app for Windows with a new design and collaborative features.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/02/microsoft-launches-outlook-lite-for-low-powered-android-phones/
Hackers abuse ‘chaotic’ Nomad exploit to drain almost $200M in crypto
Cross-chain messaging protocol Nomad has become the target of crypto’s latest nine-figure attack after hackers abused a “chaotic” security exploit to steal almost $200 million in digital assets.
Nomad, a token bridge that allows users to send and receive tokens between Avalanche (AVAX), Ethereum (ETH), Evmos (EVMOS), Moonbeam (GLMR) and Milkomeda C1 blockchains, was attacked on Monday, with hackers draining almost all of the protocol’s funds.
Approximately $190.7 million in crypto was stolen from the bridge, according to decentralized finance tracking platform DeFi Llama, which shows that the current total value locked — the amount of user funds deposited in a DeFi protocol — is less than $12,000 at the time of writing.
Nomad has yet to confirm how hackers were able to steal the funds. But according to samczsun, the head of security at web3 investment firm Paradigm, a recent update to one of Nomad’s smart contracts made it easy for users to spoof transactions. This meant that when a user transferred funds from one blockchain to another, Nomad allegedly never checked the amount, enabling the user to withdraw funds didn’t that didn’t belong to them. For example, a user could send 1 ETH, for example, and then manually call the smart contract on the other blockchain to receive 100 ETH. Blockchain audit company Zellic also came to the same conclusion.
“It’s like using a checkbook to withdraw funds from a bank, and the bank doesn’t verify if we actually hold enough money,” Adrian Hetman, tech lead of the triaging team at web3 bug bounty program Immunefi, told TechCrunch. “They only care that the check itself looks valid.”
Samczun explains that, unlike most bridge attacks where a single culprit is behind the entire exploit, the “chaotic” Nomad attack was a free for all whereby opportunists flocked to steal funds from the bridge once word had got around, resulting in what the researcher described as a “frenzied free-for-all.” Blockchain security firm Peckshield said more than 41 addresses drained $152 million — or 80% of the stolen funds.
“All that was required to exploit it was to copy the original hacker’s transaction and change the original address to a custom one. Simple copy-paste,” Hetman added.
The incident affected Wrapped Ether (WETH), USD Coin (USDC), WBTC and other tokens that were drained from the bridge.
TechCrunch contacted Nomad but has yet to receive a response. However, the company took to Twitter to warn about impersonators trying to collect funds. “We’re aware of impersonators posing as Nomad and providing fraudulent addresses to collect funds,” it said. “We aren’t yet providing instructions to return bridge funds. Disregard comms from all channels other than Nomad’s official channel.”
In a separate tweet, Nomad confirmed it has notified law enforcement …read more
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/02/nomad-chaotic-exploit-crypto/
Savana raises a fresh round of capital to digitize banks’ services
More specifically, Savana attempts to decouple third-party components of banking systems and abstract them into APIs that encapsulate not only the components, but also the rules, workflows, automations and integrations required to perform business tasks. The APIs serve as a library of customer and account servicing functions that are reusable and complementary to Savana’s enterprise content management system, a repository of a bank’s content related to customers and accounts. Beyond this, Savana offers a low-code UI framework to build internal and customer-facing apps that interface with the aforementioned APIs.
“Through pre-configured processes and integrations, [bankers using Savana] gain a real-time, holistic view of all customer accounts, cards, communications, and more, while customers benefit from better, more personalized service,” Sanchez continued. “It eliminates process silos by automating processes between systems and people and eliminates the need for multiple, siloed vendors. [The] turnkey, end-to-end platform is pre-configured with hundreds of APIs enabled.”
Of course, Savana doesn’t stand alone in the market for banking modernization tools.
Malvern, Pennsylvania–based Savana, a company building financial software products for legacy banks, today announced that it raised $45 million. A portion of the capital — $10 million — was debt, while the rest was a Series A equity tranche led by Georgian Capital Partners.
CEO Michael Sanchez told TechCrunch that the proceeds will be put toward general growth and supporting Savana’s go-to-market and product development projects.
Savana was founded in 2009 by Sanchez, who previously served as the president of the international division of FIS. Prior to FIS, he launched Sanchez Computer Associates, a supplier of core banking systems.
The problem Savana solves pertains to architecture, Sanchez tells TechCrunch. Despite banks’ digital transformation efforts, many haven’t made the switch successfully, he ardently claims.
To his point, a 2022 survey found that — among banks and credit unions who believe they’re at least three-quarters through a transition to digital — less than 25% have seen a meaningful increase in revenue. Moreover, only 11% of finance executives say their organization has modernized systems to the point where they can easily incorporate new digital technologies, according to Deloitte.
“Today’s consumers prefer digital-only banking. This change in consumer behavior has been underway for a number of years and accelerated by COVID-19 shutdowns, which led consumers to complete everyday tasks, such as shopping for groceries, depositing their checks, or managing their bills, all online,” Sanchez said in an email interview. “Despite appearances that banks have all made the transformation to digital, the majority of banks are not ready for this major change in consumer behavior … This is a major problem for banks trying to stay competitive in an environment with tons of fintech pressure.”
Savana purports to solve this problem through a combination of templates, APIs and integrations engineered to automate back-office and core banking processes. The company’s platform provides a “process architecture” for service spanning various banking and customer channels, ostensibly speeding the time to market for products and ensuring service requests get addressed quickly.
A glimpse at Savana’s service management dashboard. Image Credits: Savana
More specifically, Savana attempts to decouple third-party components of banking systems and abstract them into APIs that encapsulate not only the components, but also the rules, workflows, automations and integrations required to perform business tasks. The APIs serve as a library of customer and account servicing functions that are reusable and complementary to Savana’s enterprise content management system, a repository of a bank’s content related to customers and accounts. Beyond this, Savana offers a low-code UI framework to build internal and customer-facing apps that interface with the aforementioned APIs.
“Through pre-configured processes and integrations, [bankers using Savana] gain a real-time, holistic view of all customer accounts, cards, communications, and more, while customers benefit from better, more personalized service,” Sanchez continued. “It eliminates process silos by automating processes between systems and people and eliminates the need for multiple, siloed vendors. [The] turnkey, end-to-end platform is pre-configured with hundreds of APIs enabled.”
Of course, Savana doesn’t …read more
Instagram is being MySpaced by TikTok and other TC news
This week on the TechCrunch Podcast, Becca Szkutak comes on to talk about the fraught state of extension rounds for many early-stage startups and Devin Coldewey about upcoming changes to Instagram that a lot of users agree will make the app much worse. And as always, Darrell will catch you up on the tech news you may have missed this week.
Articles from the episode:
- Instagram to walk back full-screen home feed and temporarily reduce recommended posts
- Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok
- Every startup wants an extension round, but there aren’t enough to go around
Other news from the week:
- Meta posts its first ever quarterly revenue decline
- Amazon’s shares rise on earnings beat, despite $2B loss
- iPhone revenue up slightly for Q3, as other hardware categories lose steam
- Rivian begins laying off 6% of workforce
- T-Mobile will pay out $350M to customers in data breach settlement
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/02/instagram-is-being-myspaced-by-tiktok-and-other-tc-news/
Innoviz lidar will be on all VW vehicles with automated driving capabilities
Israeli lidar startup Innoviz will supply its lidar sensors and perception software to all vehicles with automated driving capabilities within Volkswagen group brands, the company said Tuesday.
Innoviz will work directly with Cariad SE, VW’s automotive software company, to integrate its technology into upcoming VW vehicles.
The partnership with VW is Innoviz’s third design win with a Tier 1 supplier. In April, BMW revealed that Innoviz’s lidar would be on the 2023 BMW i7 electric vehicles, and in May last year, Innoviz was selected by another unnamed Tier 1 automotive supplier for its autonomous shuttle program.
VW hasn’t yet revealed which models will first be built with Innoviz’s tech, but the automaker has been making several moves towards boosting its advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving capabilities. Earlier this year, Cariad and Bosch teamed up to develop software for automated driving for use in VW’s cars, and in May, VW chose Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride platform to power its ADAS and automated driving.
Innoviz says the VW program, which brings with it a forward-looking order book of $4 billion, takes the startup’s total estimated sales up to $6.6 billion.
Innoviz says it is able to achieve a high level of performance, up to 300 meters of visual range, at a low cost using a 905 nanometer (nm) laser. Velodyne, a lidar rival, also uses a 905 nm laser and claims to be able to reach up to 300 meters of range. However, Velodyne’s highest performance lidar is 128 lines at up to 20 frames per second. To compare, Innoviz has 600 lines at up to 20 frames per second, the company says.
Keilaf claims Velodyne’s products are priced in the thousands of dollars, whereas Innoviz’s is priced in the hundreds. TechCrunch was unable to confirm costs with Velodyne.
“What really sets Innoviz, and this deal, apart is that we won the deal as a Tier 1 supplier,” Keilaf told TechCrunch. “Innoviz is the only lidar manufacturer to have achieved this designation. This signals a major shift—not just for Innoviz, but for the entire automotive industry—in the way that carmakers partner with their tech providers. As a Tier 1 supplier, we benefit from direct access to OEMs, as well as increased margins and profits.”
Cybrary secures $25M to grow its platform for cybersecurity training
The cybersecurity industry has taken a hit recently, with economic headwinds prompting layoffs and a broad investor pullback. But some firms have escaped unscathed, like cybersecurity training platform Cybrary, which today announced that it raised $25 million in a Series C funding round. CEO Kevin Hanes conveyed to TechCrunch that the round, which brings Cybrary’s total raised to $48 million, was led by BuildGroup and Gula Tech Adventure and will be put toward developing “content and capabilities” on the company’s platform.
Cybrary was launched in 2015 by co-founders Ralph Sita and Ryan Corey (Hanes joined as CEO a year ago). As Hanes tells it, their mission was to break down barriers to the cybersecurity industry by creating a way for aspiring professionals to enter the field — no matter their background or experience.
“There are an estimated 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity roles today. Studies suggest the global cybersecurity workforce needs to grow 65% to effectively defend organizations’ critical assets. Introducing more products and technology will not help organizations solve this fundamental issue,” Hanes told TechCrunch via email. “Investing in people is key to narrowing the cybersecurity skills gap and helping to combat increasing burnout and human error. Cybersecurity professionals at every stage of their careers need an affordable and accessible training platform to arm them with the skills and confidence to respond to threats.”
Cybrary’s e-learning portal offers access to training content, including online courses and tools, built around adversary techniques and vulnerabilities. Contained within the catalog are activities led by cybersecurity experts, covering topics like ethical hacking, digital forensics, web app security and networking and operating systems.
Hanes makes the case that Cybrary is a more affordable alternative to in-person bootcamps and other cybersecurity e-learning platforms on the market. A Pro plan, which includes certification prep, labs, and practice assessments, starts at $59. While some might argue that Cybrary isn’t as comprehensive as an intensive, weeks-long bootcamp, it’s indeed a fraction of the cost — most cybersecurity bootcamps average in the thousands of dollars.
“Decision makers should assess the most risk they can reduce with the next dollars they spend and consider the case for training their team,” Hanes said. “Worldwide, 80% of organizations suffered one or more breaches that they could attribute to a lack of cybersecurity skills and awareness. So leaders need to invest in their people, not only to reduce organizational risk, but also to build a cybersecurity talent pipeline across their organizations.”
Eighty-employee Cybrary has reasonably strong traction in the market, with more than 3.7 million users and 742 companies enrolled in its Cybrary for Teams product. The startup also has a budding defense business, involving what Hanes vaguely described as “many” different government groups and military branches.
“Ramping up our in-house cybersecurity expertise has enabled us to create a new style of training that is focused on hands-on skills and understanding real-world threats and vulnerabilities, and how to ensure …read more
Identity verification company Youverify extends seed funding to $2.5M as it expands across Africa
This past month has seen several African fintechs such as Flutterwave and Union54 make headlines for compliance checks and fraud issues. Both unlinked events re-emphasize the importance of know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks and why regulators enforce strict policies that financial institutions need to be held accountable to while operating across the continent and globally.
For the many startups whose services help keep the operations of financial institutions such as banks and fintechs in check, this period highlights their relevance more than ever. In the latest development, Youverify, a Lagos and San Francisco–based identity verification company helping African banks and startups automate KYC and other compliance procedures, is announcing that it has secured a $1 million seed round extension. The startup raised a $1.5 million round in 2020, bringing its total seed raise to $2.5 million.
Africa-focused VCs Orange Ventures and LoftyInc Capital, the two investors who co-led its initial seed round, also led the extension. Additional investment came from Octerra Capital, Plug & Play Venture, Syntax Ventures, HTTP Investors, Afer Group and Fronesyz Capital.
The proliferation of financial services in Africa is beginning to attract more scrutiny from regulators. According to reports, transactions worth $116 billion will be made through digital payment channels this year, requiring stringent measures to prevent identity theft and fraud. Therefore, the rise in focus on maintaining transparency in financial regulations and improving strategies for KYC and AML by implementing regulatory technologies has become a significant growth factor for the market. And as regtech demand globally increases, so will Africa’s, with reports saying it will reach about $1.2 billion in the next five years.
Youverify came into Africa’s regtech scene when founder and CEO Gbenga Odegbami founded the company in 2018. Launched in the Nigerian market, Youverify first provided API for address and identity verification to several financial institutions. Now it has added more KYC products and expanded into new markets such as Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, Kenya and Uganda.
“The way our customers see us is that we help them automate their KYC and compliance issues,” said Odegbami on a call with TechCrunch.
In addition to verifying identities beyond Nigeria’s bank verification number (BVN) and addresses, Odegbami says Youverify layers KYC and compliance products such as transaction monitoring. He further explained that these offerings cater to issues some fintech platforms have faced recently: alleged AML issues in the case of Flutterwave in Kenya and Ping Express in the U.S. and fraud in the case of Union54’s chargebacks. In the latter, Youverify claims it could’ve prevented large-scale chargeback fraud by identifying the pattern of transactions to flag fraud, blocking the virtual cards and tying them back to fraudsters committing the multiple fake chargebacks.
“They [Union54] grew faster than they could put in place the proper transaction monitoring and fraud detection systems that will identify transactions happening from their customers,” the CEO said of the …read more
Amazon launches AWS ‘skill builder’ training subscriptions starting at $29 per month
Skilling up
It’s worth noting that each of the so-called “big three” cloud companies have introduced all manner of training courses through the years as they try to sway developers and companies over to their respective ecosystems. For the most part,
Amazon’s AWS is introducing premium paid subscriptions for individuals and teams looking to bolster their cloud computing skills.
Amazon announced a bunch of free cloud skills training products last November, one of which was AWS skill builder, an online learning center featuring hundreds of free cloud computing courses. With AWS skill builder subscriptions, the tech giant is now looking to monetize the offering through monthly subscriptions that usher in a bunch of extra features and services on top of the basic free training plan.
Individual subscriptions are priced at $29 per month or $299 for the year, and they offer three practice exams for those looking to pass an official AWS Certification program, which the company has offered for the past decade. On top of that, subscribers are offered tools such as “builder labs,” which are basically practical guided exercises spanning some of the more common cloud situations — users are given a sandboxed AWS account for the exercise.
Team subscriptions, meanwhile, weigh in at $449 per learner each year, though high-volume discounts are available. This plan includes a bunch of enterprise-focused features such as the ability to assign training exercises, progress reports, and integration with a company’s single sign-on (SSO) provider.
AWS Skill Builder Subscriptions
Skilling up
It’s worth noting that each of the so-called “big three” cloud companies have introduced all manner of training courses through the years as they try to sway developers and companies over to their respective ecosystems. For the most part, they’ve largely been free (though there are many premium courses available through third-party partnerships), but we are starting to see a push toward cloud companies charging their existing customers for skilling up, which is what Amazon’s latest program is all about. By charging a recurring fee, this may encourage users to place a greater value on the courses, and ensure that they keep up with their learning — while simultaneously giving AWS a small revenue boost.
Last year Google introduced Google Cloud Skills Boost with the goal of training 40 million people how to use various facets of its cloud platform. This was powered by its 2016 acquisition of Qwiklabs, and similar to Amazon’s new effort, it charges $29 or $299 depending on whether the user wants to commit to a monthly or annual subscription. There is also a team subscription option that’s apparently available upon request.
If nothing else, all this helps to highlight how pivotal the cloud has become in the fortunes of Big Tech. Despite the global economic climate and a $2 billion loss, Amazon last week reported continued strong cloud growth, with AWS revenues jumping 33% year-on-year to $19.74 billion in Q2.
But while cloud spending is clearly going up, IT skills gap aren’t necessarily keeping apace, and addressing this disparity is something that Amazon hopes its customers will be willing to pay for.