Tips and tricks for all

Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE : California police won't release training materials on facial recognition or license plate readers on copyright grounds, despite law mandating access   —  California police are refusing to release documents about the surveillance technology it uses, despite a new law that requires their release. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2YL4LmO

Arielle Pardes / Wired : The 👁👄👁 stunt, a hyped beta of a fake app, exploited Silicon Valley's fixation on shiny new things, but raised $200K for charities   —  Last weekend, the stunt aimed to use Silicon Valley's love of shiny new things for charity.  The result left people wondering about the memeification of movements. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2NI0eLk

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat : Elementary Robotics, which develops tools to automate industrial tasks, announces $12.7M Series A funding to deploy its automation products at scale   —  Elementary Robotics, a robotics company developing tools to automate industrial tasks, today announced it has raised a $12.7 million round. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3ikiDfB

Alex Knapp / Forbes : NexHealth, which provides an automated online appointment system for small medical and dental practices, raises $15M Series A   —  I write about the future of science, technology, and culture.  —  I am a staff writer covering health care.  Email me at kjennings@forbes.com. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2ZsgNjQ

Jade Macmillan / ABC : The Australian government announces AU$1.35B will be used over the next decade to boost cyberdefense capabilities against a surge in state-backed cyberattacks   —  The Federal Government wants to create more than 500 new jobs in its highly secretive cyber intelligence agency as part … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2YNQXIf

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica : US Cybercom warns foreign state-backed hackers will likely abuse a recently discovered SAML vulnerability that allows unauthorized network admin logins   —  The window of opportunity to fix critical security bug is rapidly closing.  —  Foreign hackers backed by a well-resourced government … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2AjamXX

When in 2010, former VC Michael Kim set out to raise a fund that he would invest in a spate of micro VC managers, the investors to which he turned didn’t get it. Why pay Kim and his firm, Cendana Capital ,  a management fee on top of the management fees that the VC managers themselves charge? Fast forward to today, and Kim has apparently proven to his backers that he’s worth the extra cost. Three years after raising $260 million across a handful of vehicles whose capital he plugged into up-and-coming venture firms, Kim is now revealing a fresh $278 million in capital commitments, including $218 million for its fourth flagship fund, and $60 million that Cendana will be managing expressly for the University of Texas endowment. We talked with Kim last week about how he plans to invest the money, which differs slightly from how he has invested in the past. Rather than stick solely with U.S.-based seed-stage managers who are raising vehicles of $100 million or less, he will split Cenda

Facebook’s recently launched app, Hobbi , an experiment in short-form content creation around personal projects, hobbies, and other Pinterest-y content, is already shutting down. The app first arrived on iOS in February as one of now several launches from Facebook’s internal R&D group, the NPE Team. Hobbi users have now been notified by way of push notification that the app is shutting down on July 10, 2020. The app allows users to export their data from its settings. In the few months it’s been live on the U.S. App Store, Hobbi only gained 7,000 downloads, according to estimates from Sensor Tower. Apptopia also reported the app had under 10K downloads and saw minimal gains during May and June. Though Hobbi clearly took cues from Pinterest, it was not designed to be a pinboard of inspirational ideas. Instead, Hobbi users would organize photos of their projects — like gardening, cooking, arts & crafts, décor, and more — in a visual diary of sorts. The goal was to photograph

Lyft’s self-driving vehicle division has restarted testing on public roads in California, several months after pausing operations amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Lyft’s Level 5 program said Tuesday some of its autonomous vehicles are back on the road in Palo Alto and at its closed test track. The company has not resumed a pilot program that provided rides to Lyft employees in Palo Alto. The company said it is following CDC guidelines for personal protective equipment and surface cleaning. It has also enacted several additional safety steps to prevent the spread of COVID. Each autonomous test vehicle is equipped with partitions to separate the two safety operators inside, the company said. The operators must wear face shields and submit to temperature checks. They’re also paired together for two weeks at a time. Lyft’s Level 5 program — a nod to the SAE automated driving level that means the vehicle handles all driving in all conditions — launched in July 2017 but didn’t starting testi

Bloomberg : Sources: Apple has shifted the strategy of its Arcade gaming service, canceling contracts for some titles in development and seeking games with more engagement   —  - Company ends contracts for multiple future Arcade titles  — Apple seeks games with stronger engagement to hook users from Techmeme https://ift.tt/38izhY4

TransferWise , the London-headquartered international money transfer service recently valued at $3.5 billion , has secured an additional license with U.K. regulators to enable it to offer investment products in the future. This will mean that U.K. customers who have money deposited in a TransferWise multi-currency or so-called “borderless” account will be given the option to make that money work harder on their behalf. Total deposits currently sit at £2 billion, so there is quite a lot of customer cash potentially idle. However, the company isn’t revealing much detail on its future investments product, except to say that it will initially offer “simple, affordable funds from reputable providers” so that customers can earn a return on their balances. Up to £85,000 of money held as investments within a TransferWise account per customer will be protected under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. The new offering is still in development and will launch “in the next 12 months.”

SpaceX is set to launch a Falcon 9 rocket today from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch is set to take place at 3:55 PM EDT (12:55 PM PDT), with a 15-minute window opening at that time, and there is a backup opportunity on Wednesday, July 1 if the launch needs to be pushed back for any time. This rocket is carrying a GPS III Space Vehicle, which is named “Katherine Johnson” after the NASA mathematician who played a fundamental role in Mercury, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. The launch today will add another GPS III satellite to the U.S. Space Force’s existing in-space GPS assets, which include three already on orbit, with another one set to be deployed in 2022. This third-generation GPS satellite is three times more accurate, and eight times more resilient in terms of its ability to resist gaming efforts than prior versions. In addition to its use for military and defense applications, the GPS III satellite will also contribute to civilian GPS-based satelli

In 2019, in the US alone, more than 10,000 startups raised more than $133 billion in venture funding , with a large proportion of that equity investments. Today, a company building a platform to help startups consider alternative routes to financing — specifically less dilutive options that give up less or no equity in the process — is announcing a round of funding of its own to ramp up its activity. Capital, which has built an AI-based platform called the “Capital Machine” that ingests details about your company to provide tips on how to optimise it and — if you make at least $5 million in annual recurring revenue — to provide offers of financing (typically between $5 million and $50 million, at a 5-15% interest rate, and typically within a day of asking for it), has raised a further $9 million, a “Seed 2” that it will use to continue expanding the Capital Machine’s functionality. The funding is coming from an interesting group of investors. It’s being led by AME Cloud Ventures (th