Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Musical.ly's growth and controversy. It's the Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7 2016 By Darrell Etherington

The Daily Crunch 12/7/16

Crowdsourcing your video news, Musical.ly's age anxieties and AI's mastery over Civilization. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for December 7, 2016. And if you're a child hearing this newsletter through a conversation with a talking toy, stop that right now.

1. Seenit wins the Disrupt Cup

TechCrunch Disrupt London 2016 just wrapped up, and the winner was Seenit, a video platform that combines footage captured by a group of users that can be specified by any organization. It's kind of like having your own roving reporter pool or b-roll shooters.

The platform is indeed cool, and has already been used by some big news and media organizations for a different kind of coverage. It'd be nice if it could automatically suggest content that might be most interesting, too, but that might come later.

2. Musical.ly has 40M monthly active users

Social app Musical.ly has a lot of MAUs for an app as young as it is, with 40 million people using it at least once a month. On the Disrupt London stage, the company's founder defended the network against accusations that it knowingly hosts a number of young users who are perhaps over-sexualizing themselves. Instagram has similar problems, he noted, which is definitely true.

3. Fab founder Jason Goldberg dips back into the funding pool

Fab founder Jason Goldberg hasn't really had a standout success, despite booting up a number of startups. Still, Goldberg's raising a seed round from investors for his new startup Pepo, and backers of his previous ventures are coming back for more despite not having any big payouts to show for having done so before.

4. This AI can probably beat you at Civilization

World building sims are incredibly addictive, and Civilization is definitely that. Arago's HIRO AI can play Freesim, the popular free version of Sid Meier's original, and it can play it so well it can beat not only all difficulties of computer players, but also up to 80 percent of the human players it encounters, too.

5. Trump's tech tête-à-tête

President elect Donald Trump is going to hold a meeting with the top leaders in tech. We don't know what this might look like or who's on the invitee list, but you can probably guess at invitees. The question will be how willing they are to play ball with Trump, given his questionable stances with respect to everything from Apple's manufacturing practices to data privacy.

6. Talking toys are best avoided

Toys that hold conversations might not be the best idea, according to a new complaint by consumer watchdog groups. That's mostly because a lot of these toys use speech recognition services that don't necessarily have a tight policy on privacy, which could lead to exposure risk for the content.

7. Oculus Touch's Wii Sports equivalent is a bit less accessible

Oculus Touch is here, and with it – games. VR Sports Challenge is kind of like its own Wii Sports, but Fitz found that while true sports fans will love it, more casual players might find it harder to get in the game.

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Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Social apps take on big content problems. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6 2016 By Darrell Etherington

The Daily Crunch 12/6/16

Tech takes on terrorist content, Instagram takes on abusive comments and Facebook takes on misleading language. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for December 6, 2016. And if you're wondering about Apple Watch sales, Tim Cook, for one, says they're great.

1. Tech titans team to tackle terrorism

It's an alliterative dream, but it's also a meaningful effort – Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are joining forces to develop a plan that will help them limit the spread of terrorist content through their services.

This will take the shape of a shared industry database for quickly tagging the worst of this type of content and quickly readying it for removal, using past examples to build the library. Each member company will still retain the independent decision-making capability for what does and doesn't get removed.

2. Facebook is now asking users to help flag "misleading language"

Facebook is doing more to address the ongoing 'fake news' problem, with a new survey being sent out to select users that's asking their opinion on how much certain headlines use "misleading language." It's a five degree scale, and could be used to help build some kind of database of what words are seen by users as most misleading overall, which could then filter out certain items from appearing in the newsfeed. But people who were sharing fake news with abandon during the lead up to the U.S. election aren't likely to admit that the stuff they're endorsing is intentionally misleading, so it isn't clear how this will help.

3. Open Bionics is going to work with the world's largest healthcare network on advanced bionic prosthetics

Prosthetics can stand to gain a lot from technology improvements, and Open Bionics is one startup working to make that happen. They're taking inspiration from pop culture, including movies and video games, and they're working to drastically reduce cost and performance as well. And now they're working with the National Health Service in the UK to potentially get prosthetics to the people who need them most as effectively as possible.

4. Tim Cook makes a rare public denial of an analyst assessment of Watch sales

A new IDC report essentially claimed that the wearables category is dead or dying, but Apple CEO Tim Cook says that Apple Watch is doing just fine. He told Reuters that it had its best sales week ever during the first week of the holiday shopping period – but he's still not talking specifics.

5. The Elysium Health anti-aging pill picks up more funding

Anti-aging is one of those things that will interest humans forever, or at least until we finally become sentient computers in earnest. Elysium Health has a pill that it claims can help slow down the aging process. Its Basis product is viewed as pseudoscience by some, but hey, who likes aging?

6. Instagram is fighting back against user abuse

Instagram definitely engenders a lot of abuse in its comments (every comments system does always forever and that's a universal constant or something). But the photo-focused social network is fighting back, with the ability to disable comments entirely on posts, and the ability to remove followers. Plus, users can now like comments, too – which they'll hopefully use to encourage positivity.

7. Sonos speaker support is now live for all on Spotify

Spotify Connect makes me very happy because it works with a lot of my existing speakers without any tweaks. Now, it also works with Sonos, meaning you can broadcast your music to your Sonos speakers without having to leave the Spotify app. Good.

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