<h1>Archives</h1>
    Tech News

    GoPro Hero 7 review: Super smooth video without a clunky gimbal

    September 20, 2018

    GoPro Hero 7 Black
    $399.99
    The Good

    Crazy smooth video stabilization • Easier-to-use touchscreen UI • Vertical video capture • Super simple sharing to Instagram Stories

    The Bad

    No real battery improvement • Low-light footage is a little soft

    The Bottom Line

    The GoPro Hero 7 Black’s built-in stabilization is so good it eliminates the need for expensive and clunky gimbals.

    Mashable Score4.25
    Cool Factor4.0
    Learning Curve5.0
    Performance4.0
    Bang for the Buck4.0

    Just when I thought there were no more meaningful ways to improve an action camera, GoPro goes and releases the new Hero 7 Black. Read more…

    More about Reviews, Gopro, Cameras, Mashable Choice, and Stabilization
    Source: Mashable | GoPro Hero 7 review: Super smooth video without a clunky gimbal

    World News

    Trump complains about lack of funding for border wall in 'ridiculous' spending bill

    September 20, 2018
    1. Trump complains about lack of funding for border wall in ‘ridiculous’ spending bill  Washington Post
    2. Trump Says ‘Ridiculous’ GOP Senate Spending Bill Must Pay for Border Wall  Wall Street Journal
    3. Trump Today: President raises shutdown specter by calling spending bill ‘ridiculous’  MarketWatch
    4. Full coverage

    Source: Google News | Trump complains about lack of funding for border wall in 'ridiculous' spending bill

    Startups

    MariaDB acquires Clustrix

    September 20, 2018

    MariaDB, the company behind the eponymous MySQL drop-in replacement database, today announced that it has acquired Clustrix, which itself is a MySQL drop-in replacement database, but with a focus on scalability. MariaDB will integrate Clustrix’s technology into its own database, which will allow it to offer its users a more scalable database service in the long run.

    That by itself would be an interesting development for the popular open source database company. But there’s another angle to this story, too. In addition to the acquisition, MariaDB also today announced that cloud computing company ServiceNow is investing in MariaDB, an investment that helped it get to today’s acquisition. ServiceNow doesn’t typically make investments, though it has made a few acquisitions. It is a very large MariaDB user, though, and it’s exactly the kind of customer that will benefit from the Clustrix acquisition.

    MariaDB CEO Michael Howard tells me that ServiceNow current supports about 80,000 instances of MariaDB. With this investment (which is actually an add-on to MariaDB’s 2017 Series C round), ServiceNow’s SVP of Development and Operations Pat Casey will join MariaDB’s board.

    Why would MariaDB acquire a company like Clustrix, though? When I asked Howard about the motivation, he noted that he’s now seeing more companies like ServiceNow that are looking at a more scalable way to run MariaDB. Howard noted that it would take years to build a new database engine from the ground up.

    “You can hire a lot of smart people individually, but not necessarily have that experience built into their profile,” he said. “So that was important and then to have a jumpstart in relation to this market opportunity — this mandate from our market. It typically takes about nine years, to get a brand new, thorough database technology off the ground. It’s not like a SaaS application where you can get a front-end going in about a year or so.

    Howard also stressed that the fact that the teams at Clustrix and MariaDB share the same vocabulary, given that they both work on similar problems and aim to be compatible with MySQL, made this a good fit.

    While integrating the Clustrix database technology into MariaDB won’t be trivial, Howard stressed that the database was always built to accommodate external database storage engines. MariaDB will have to make some changes to its APIs to be ready for the clustering features of Clustrix. “It’s not going to be a 1-2-3 effort,” he said. “It’s going to be a heavy-duty effort for us to do this right. But everyone on the team wants to do it because it’s good for the company and our customers.

    MariaDB did not disclose the price of the acquisition. Since it was founded in 2006, though, the Y Combinator-incubated Clustrix had raised just under $72 million, though. MariaDB has raised just under $100 million so far, so it’s probably a fair guess that Clustrix didn’t necessarily sell for a large multiple of that.


    Source: Tech Crunch Startups | MariaDB acquires Clustrix

    Startups

    Hear about the keys to local investing at Startup Battlefield Africa with Omobola Johnson and Lexi Novitske

    September 20, 2018

    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: Tech Crunch Startups | Hear about the keys to local investing at Startup Battlefield Africa with Omobola Johnson and Lexi Novitske

    Tech News

    Inside Facebook Dating, launching first in Colombia

    September 20, 2018

    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.

    How Facebook Dating Works…

    “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.

    …And Why

    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.

    It also likely limits the prying eyes of journalists hunting for Facebook policy or privacy screw-ups, and eliminates the risk of disrupting its advertising in more lucrative markets like the U.S. It’s hard to forget that Facebook screwed up news consumption in Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala and Cambodia last year by banishing all news publishers to a separate feed — effectively depriving the populations of important information. There are consequences to its experiments.

    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:

    1. Meaningful relationships not one-night-stands, because “meaningful” is Facebook’s new watchword as it enters the ‘Time Well Spent’ era, and the company has the deep biographical and interest data to find you matches you’ll want to wake up next to each day, not just go to bed with.
    2. Opt-in not automatic enrollment, because “not everyone who’s single wants to date, not everyone who wants to date wants to date online, and not everyone who dates online wants to date on Facebook” says Sharp in a moment of humility.
    3. Within Facebook not a new app, because it lowers the barrier to behavior that’s already hard enough for some people, and it can only achieve its mission if people actually use it.
    4. Friends-of-friends and strangers not friends, because many people’s biggest fear is “are my friends and family going to see this?” says Sharp. People who are already friends don’t need help meeting and may already know if they want to date each other.
    5. A new profile not your same one, because some people might want to share a different side of themselves or might not publicly disclose their true sexual orientation. The only info ported into Facebook Dating is your first name and age.
    6. Message and response not both people swiped right, because since Facebook wants you to be deliberate about who you show interest in, you have to send one message and hope to hear back. There’s no infinite right-swiping and then waiting to get matched or messaged. “It puts the power in the responder” Sharp says.
    7. Profiles and chat are separate not part of Facebook, because it doesn’t want to scare users about privacy slip-ups, and doesn’t want people to pollute the main Facebook experience soliciting dates
    8. Real age and location not self-described, because Facebook wants to prevent catfishing as well as users contacting matches in distant cities who they’ll never meet.
    9. Matches through Events and Groups not randos, because a photo isn’t enough for choosing a life partner, interest overlaps are key to compatability, and they give people ready-made happenings to use as dates.

    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: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Inside Facebook Dating, launching first in Colombia

    Startups

    Lime hits 11.5 million bike and scooter rides

    September 20, 2018

    Bike and scooter company Lime recently hit 11.5 million rides, a couple of months after it surpassed six million rides. This milestone comes just 14 months after Lime deployed its first bikes.

    Today, Lime is in more than 100 markets throughout the U.S. and Europe. Last December, Lime brought its bikes to a number of European cities and in June, Lime brought its scooters to Paris. By the end of this year, Lime plans to launch in an additional 50 cities.

    The rise of shared personal electric vehicles has also led to a new type of side hustle for some people. Through Lime’s Juicer program, which enables anyone to make money from charging scooters overnight, the company has paid out millions of dollars to those workers.

    Lime has raised $467 million in funding, with its most recent round coming in at $335 million. The round, led by GV, included participation from Uber.


    Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Lime hits 11.5 million bike and scooter rides

    Startups

    Curve, the all-your-cards-in-one app, adds ‘zero fees’ when spending abroad

    September 20, 2018

    Curve, the London fintech that lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single Curve card and app to make it easier to manage your spending, has always faced a slight awareness problem. Even though nobody else does what Curve does — the product is innovative on a multiple fronts, such as its “financial time travel” feature — it is also the kind of proposition that not everybody gets until they’ve signed up and started using it. Once they do, however, they tend to stick around. I’m told retention rates are way above industry average at 70 percent.

    Three years since launch and much further along in the roadmap, the sum of its parts is beginning to make Curve a much easier sell. Not least because any company that wants to create “one card to rule them all” needs to have multiple bases covered if it is going to convince you to leave your other debit and credit cards at home. One of those, of course, is low FX fees when spending abroad. Or, better still, zero fees.

    Enter the latest update from Curve, which introduces the “real exchange rate, with no hidden fees”. Up until now, Curve offered a better exchange rate and fee structure than most high street banks (around 1-2 percent on top of MasterCard’s competitive exchange rate), but it wasn’t up there with the very best on the market, such as the likes of Revolut, Starling, TransferWise, Monzo or Tandem, depending on use case and your penchant for convenience over price.

    To that end, the fintech startup has spent the last six months re-engineering the platform’s money exchange piping to be able to compete much harder in currency conversion and at the point of purchase.

    “Our zero FX proposition is built on the foundations of the innovative technology at the heart of Curve, enabling us to perform FX swaps on top of any card that you have loaded into your Curve wallet without the user needing to do anything special and with the transaction showing in the underlying cards native currency,” Curve CTO Matt Collinge tells me. “We are essentially adding a wrapper of convenient ‘fintechness’ to existing bank and credit cards”.

    The new “zero fee” pricing is fairly straight-forward but there are some caps and different limitations depending on if you have the blue free Curve card or the black paid-for one. The pricing changes slightly from November, too.

    The company broke down the terms as follows:

    Blue Curve card users:

    – Spend Abroad: 0% fee and access to the Real Exchange Rate on spend in over 150+ supported foreign currencies worldwide. Initial cap of up to £500 per rolling month, and 1% fee thereafter (in November this will become 2% thereafter).
    – ATM Extractions Abroad: £200 at 0% fee, 2% or £2 per transaction thereafter (whichever is greater).
    – Weekend Spend Abroad: as the currency market is closed, we need to charge a 0.5% markup on Euros and US Dollars and 1% markup for all other supported currencies (in November this becomes 0.5% fee for Euros and US dollars, 1.5% fee for all other currencies).

    Black Curve card users:

    – Spend Abroad: 0% fee and access to the Real Exchange Rate on spend in over 150+ supported foreign currencies worldwide, for an unlimited amount per rolling year – subject to a generous Fair Use Policy of £15,000 and 1% fee thereafter (in November this will become 2% thereafter).
    – ATM Extractions Abroad: £400 ATM at 0 fee, 2% or £2 per transaction thereafter (whichever is greater).
    – Weekend Spend Abroad: as the currency market is closed, we need to charge a 0.5% markup on Euros and US Dollars and 1% markup for all other supported currencies (in November this becomes 0.5% fee for Euros and US dollars, 1.5% fee for all other currencies).

    In a call, Curve founder and CEO Shachar Bialick explained that the £500 per month zero fee cap for blue Curve card users is informed by research the startup did that showed that over 80 percent of traveling customers spend less than £500 abroad per month. The extra fees also kick in after to ensure Curve doesn’t lose money — there is in-built currency risk when attempting to give customers the real exchange rate in real-time — and is able to build a sustainable business in the long run. Likewise, the weekend bump is pretty standard and is a strategy also employed by Revolut, for example. With that said, for more frequent travellers, Bialick’s advice was that they should apply for the paid-for black Curve card, which also brings increased cash-back.

    Aside from “zero fees,” there are other advantages to using Curve when spending abroad or in a foreign currency, according to the Curve founder. Since the Curve card acts as a conduit to your other bank cards (similar to the way mobile wallets like Apple Pay work), you are effectively turning all of your debit and credit cards into zero fee currency exchange. And you don’t need to top up or decide in advance how much foreign currency to convert or worry about transferring it back if you under spend on your trip. In addition, Curve supports 150 global currencies (as a comparison, Revolut supports 24 currencies).

    But more than anything, Bialick hopes the headline of “zero fees” will shut down one potential reason not to go ‘full Curve’ for all of your everyday spending. His feeling is that once prospective users realise it competes very aggressively on FX, which is how a lot of challenger banks have attracted customers, they’ll want to give Curve a try and ditch their other cards in the process. Only then will they appreciate Curve’s fintech convergence proposition.


    Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Curve, the all-your-cards-in-one app, adds ‘zero fees’ when spending abroad