While it may seem like an expensive game, it is actually a relatively cheap way to get involved in NFT investing.
The proof-of-reserves pilot would take information that appears on Celsius’ website and have it fed from a public Horizen sidechain instead.
Read more Bitcoin’s price hit $13,600 before retrenching while some investors pulled crypto out of DeFi.
Read more The Filecoin network is facing liquidity problems, forcing some miners to borrow the native token at outrageous rates.
Read more The MakerDAO community is voting on a proposal to harden the protocol’s governance structure against flash loan voting.
Read more The code for Taproot is ready to go, but developers are still discussing how to deploy the update across Bitcoin’s distributed network.
Read more TikTok has won another battle in its fight against the Trump administration’s ban of its video-sharing app in the U.S. — or, more accurately in this case, the TikTok community won a battle. On Friday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania issued an injunction that blocked the restrictions that would have otherwise blocked TikTok from operating in the U.S. on November 12.
This particular lawsuit was not led by TikTok itself, but rather a group of TikTok creators who use the app to engage with their million-plus followers.
According to the court documents, plaintiff Douglas Marland has 2.7 million followers on the app; Alec Chambers has 1.8 million followers; and Cosette Rinab has 2.3 million followers. The creators argued — successfully as it turns out — that they would lose access to their followers in the event of a ban, as well as the “professional opportunities afforded by TikTok.” In other words, they’d lose their brand sponsorships — meaning, their income.
This is not the first time that the U.S. courts have sided with TikTok to block the Trump administration’s proposed ban over the Chinese-owned video sharing app. Last month, a D.C. judge blocked the ban that would have removed the app from being listed in U.S. app stores run by Apple and Google.
That ruling had not, however, stopped the November 12 ban that would have blocked companies from providing internet hosting services that would have allowed TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S.
The Trump administration had moved to block the TikTok app from operating in the U.S. due to its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, claiming it was a national security threat. The core argument from the judge in this ruling was the “Government’s own descriptions of the national security threat posed by the TikTok app are phrased in the hypothetical.”
That hypothetical risk was unable to be stated by the government, the judge argued, to be such a risk that it outweighed the public interest. The interest, in this case, was the more than 100 million users of TikTok and the creators like Marland, Chambers and Rinab that utilized it to spread “informational materials,” which allowed the judge to rule that the ban would shut down a platform for expressive activity.
“We are deeply moved by the outpouring of support from our creators, who have worked to protect their rights to expression, their careers, and to help small businesses, particularly during the pandemic,” said Vanessa Pappas, Interim Global Head of TikTok, in a statement. “We stand behind our community as they share their voices, and we are committed to continuing to provide a home for them to do so,” she added.
The TikTok community coming to the rescue on this one aspect of the overall TikTok picture just elevates this whole story. Though the company has been relatively quiet through this whole process, Pappas has thanked the community several times for its outpouring of support. Though there were some initial waves of “grief” on the app with creators frantically recommending people follow them on other platforms, that has morphed over time into more of a “let’s band together” vibe. This activity coalesced around a big swell in voting advocacy on the platform, where many creators are too young to actually participate but view voting messaging as their way to participate.
TikTok has remained active in the product department through the whole mess, shipping elections guides and trying to ban QAnon conspiracy spread, even as Pakistan banned and then un-banned the app.
Asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 is a huge contributor to the pandemic, but of course if there are no symptoms, how can anyone tell they should isolate or get a test? MIT research has found that hidden in the sound of coughs is a pattern that subtly, but reliably, marks a person as likely to be in the early stages of infection. It could make for a much-needed early warning system for the virus.
The sound of one’s cough can be very revealing, as doctors have known for many years. AI models have been built to detect conditions like pneumonia, asthma and even neuromuscular diseases, all of which alter how a person coughs in different ways.
Before the pandemic, researcher Brian Subirana had shown that coughs may even help predict Alzheimer’s — mirroring results from IBM research published just a week ago. More recently, Subirana thought if the AI was capable of telling so much from so little, perhaps COVID-19 might be something it could suss out as well. In fact, he isn’t the first to think so.
He and his team set up a site where people could contribute coughs, and ended up assembling “the largest research cough dataset that we know of.” Thousands of samples were used to train up the AI model, which they document in an open access IEEE journal.
The model seems to have detected subtle patterns in vocal strength, sentiment, lung and respiratory performance, and muscular degradation, to the point where it was able to identify 100% of coughs by asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers and 98.5% of symptomatic ones, with a specificity of 83% and 94% respectively, meaning it doesn’t have large numbers of false positives or negatives.
“We think this shows that the way you produce sound, changes when you have COVID, even if you’re asymptomatic,” said Subirana of the surprising finding. However, he cautioned that although the system was good at detecting non-healthy coughs, it should not be used as a diagnosis tool for people with symptoms but unsure of the underlying cause.
I asked Subirana for a bit more clarity on this point.
“The tool is detecting features that allow it to discriminate the subjects that have COVID from the ones that don’t,” he wrote in an email. “Previous research has shown you can pick up other conditions too. One could design a system that would discriminate between many conditions but our focus was on picking out COVID from the rest.”
For the statistics-minded out there, the incredibly high success rate may raise some red flags. Machine learning models are great at a lot of things, but 100% isn’t a number you see a lot, and when you do you start thinking of other ways it might have been produced by accident. No doubt the findings will need to be proven on other data sets and verified by other researchers, but it’s also possible that there’s simply a reliable tell in COVID-induced coughs that a computer listening system can hear quite easily.
The team is collaborating with several hospitals to build a more diverse data set, but is also working with a private company to put together an app to distribute the tool for wider use, if it can get FDA approval.
Are your AirPods Pro earbuds making weird noises? You’re not imagining it — and you’re not the only one.
Just a few months after Apple started shipping AirPods Pro, some users started noticing that one or both of their earbuds were rattling or crackling. The noises would reportedly get worse whenever the user moved, and would sometimes only develop after months of use.
Apple didn’t say too much about it at first, but would usually replace crackling earbuds if you took the time to hit up support. A few folks here at TechCrunch have had the rattle rear its head on our own AirPods Pro buds… only to have it pop up again in the replacements.
It seems the problem has become widespread enough for an official acknowledgement: today Apple launched an “AirPods Pro Service Program” (as first pointed out by Mark Gurman) specifically for swapping out crackling buds.
A newly published support page outlines the potential symptoms, both of which suggest the issue has to do with the noise cancellation system:
- Crackling or static sounds that increase in loud environments, with exercise or while talking on the phone
- Active Noise Cancellation not working as expected, such as a loss of bass sound, or an increase in background sounds, such as street or airplane noise
Apple notes that only units made before October 2020 are affected, suggesting they’ve fixed the issue in units now coming off the line. The support page repeatedly says faulty units will be “replaced” rather than “repaired” — so for the most part, it sounds like turnaround should be pretty quick.
Under Armour gives up on one of its big acquisitions, Uber Eats faces complaints over its free delivery policy for Black restaurants and Facebook takes another step to limit QAnon-related content. This is your Daily Crunch for October 30, 2020.
The big story: Under Armour is selling MyFitnessPal
Five years after Under Armour acquired MyFitnessPal for $475 million, it’s selling the diet- and exercise-tracking app to investment firm Francisco Partners for $345 million. It’s also shutting down the Endomondo platform, which it acquired at the same time.
Under Armour says it’s making these moves so that it can focus its brand on its “target consumer – the Focused Performer.” However, the diminished price suggested there may be more going on here, perhaps the business likely suffering as companies like Peloton and Apple (with its upcoming Fitness+ service) hog the spotlight in the casual fitness category.
It’s also worth noting that Under Armour isn’t completely giving up on digital products — it will continue operating the MapMyFitness platform, including MapMyRun and MapMyRide.
The tech giants
Uber Eats faces discrimination allegations over free delivery from Black-owned restaurants — Uber says it has received more than 8,500 demands for arbitration as a result of it ditching delivery fees for some Black-owned restaurants via Uber Eats.
Facebook is limiting distribution of ‘save our children’ hashtag over QAnon ties — Over the past several months, these terms have provided a kind of innocuous cover for the popular online conspiracy theory.
Reliance Jio Platforms tops 400M subscribers, explores expanding services outside of India — The Facebook- and Google-backed telecom operator said its finances have improved, despite the pandemic.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Daimler invests in lidar company Luminar in push to bring autonomous trucks to highways — Luminar will also become a publicly traded company through its merger with special purpose acquisition company Gores Metropoulos.
Nestlé acquires healthy meal startup Freshly for up to $1.5B — Founded in 2015, Freshly is a New York City-based startup that delivers healthy meals to your home in weekly orders, which can then be prepared in a few minutes via microwave or oven.
B8ta remains bullish on IRL shopping with new acquisition — B8ta offers shelf space to unique digital products.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
New GV partner Terri Burns has a simple investment thesis: Gen Z — Burns is the firm’s youngest partner and the first Black woman to hold the role.
Is the Great 2020 Tech Rally slowing? — What happens if COVID-19, unrest and hyped valuations collide?
(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
Teachers are leaving schools. Will they come to startups next? — Teacher departures are a loss for public schools, but an opportunity for startups racing to win a share of the changing teacher economy.
Big tech’s ‘blackbox’ algorithms face regulatory oversight under EU plan — Major internet platforms will be required to open up their algorithms to regulatory oversight under proposals European lawmakers are set to introduce next month.
AOL founder Steve Case, involved early in Section 230, says it’s time to change it — “Having more of a dialogue between the innovators and the policymakers is actually going to be critical in this internet third wave,” Case told us.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.
