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Virgin Galactic has begun its &Astronaut Readiness Program& this week, which is being run out of Under Armour Global HQ to start. Under Armour is Virgin Galacticpartner on its official astronaut uniforms, which its first paying space tourists will don on the companyinitial trips beyond Earth.
The Astronaut Readiness Program is a preparatory course that all of Virgin Galacticpassengers undertake before they can get their trip aboard the companyVSS Unity sub-orbital spaceplane. It involves guidance and instruction provided by Virgin Galactic team members, including its Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses and Chief Pilot Dave Mackay. Both Mackay and Moses were on VirginFebruary demonstration flight to space, and so can provide not only guidance based on their considerable expertise, but also share insights from actually having flown aboard the same vessel that will take the companypaying passengers up. Moses will advise on how to get around on board the spacecraft, too.
Under Armour is also involved in the program, in more ways than just providing the outfits that passengers will wear. They&re providing guidance on how astronauts should prepare with nutrition and fitness programs to ready the space tourists for their adventure. A Virgin Galactic in-house medical team is also on-hand to consult with each passenger. Virgincustomers don&t need to match the strenuous physical fitness requirements of NASA astronauts, but the company says itstill focused on ensuring its customers are healthy and hale on their trips.
Being an early customer for Virgin Galactic means not only training through programs like the one run this week in Baltimore, but also helping the new company develop and refine its process for future use.
&We will now be using the feedback from this week in Baltimore to build on that model,& Virgin Galactic said in a press release. &We discussed with our Future Astronauts how the training and the community can be best shaped for those waiting to fly and for those who have flown.&
To date, Virgin Galactic has 600 customers signed up to fly aboard its SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, which launches from a customized cargo jet aircraft to reach sub-orbital space and provides customers with a 90-minute flight, for $250,000 per ticket. Itlooking to launch its first flights for paying customers in the first half of next year.
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Read more: Virgin Galactic begins ‘Astronaut Readiness Program’ for first paying customers
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Los Angeles& district attorney is warning travelers to avoid public USB charging points because &they may contain dangerous malware.&
Reading the advisory, you might be forgiven for thinking that every USB outlet you see is just waiting for you to plug in your phone so it can steal your data. This so-called &juice-jacking& attack involves criminals loading malware &on charging stations or cables they leave plugged in at the stations so they may infect the phones and other electronic devices of unsuspecting users,& it reads. &The malware may lock the device or export data and passwords directly to the scammer.&
But the countychief prosecutoroffice told TechCrunch that it has &no cases& of juice-jacking on its books, though it said there are known cases on the east coast. When asked where those cases were, the spokesperson did not know. And when asked what prompted the alert to begin with, the spokesperson said it was part of &an ongoing fraud education campaign.&
Which begs the question — why?
Security researcher Kevin Beaumont tweeted that he hasn&t seen &any evidence of malware being used in the wild on these things.& In fact, ask around and you&ll find very little out there. Several security researchers have dropped me messages saying they&ve seen proof-of-concepts, but nothing actively malicious.
Juice-jacking is a real threat, but itan incredibly complicated and imperfect way to attack someone when there are far easier ways. And given so many phones have features in place to prevent these kinds of attacks, pulling off a juice-jacking attack would likely require burning a highly powerful exploit.
The idea, though — that you can plug in your phone and have your secrets stolen — is not entirely far-fetched. Over the years there have been numerous efforts to demonstrate that itpossible. As ZDNet points out in its coverage of the juice-jacking warning, the FBI sent out a nationwide alert about the threat after security researcher Samy Kamkar developed an Ardunio-based implant designed to look like a USB charger to wirelessly sniff the air for leaky key strokes. And just earlier this year, a security researcher developed an iPhone charger cable clone that let a nearby hacker run commands on the vulnerable computer.
LA recommend using an AC power outlet and not a charging station, and to take your cables with you. Thatsound advice, but itjust one of many things you need to do to keep your devices and data safe.
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Read more: LA warns of ‘juice-jacking’ malware, but admits it has no cases
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Nvidia has been on a wild growth ride the past five years. Surfing a wave around AI deep learning and cryptocurrency where its specialized chip architecture is among the highest performing, the companyshare price rose from the low $20s in late 2014 to eventually soar to almost $300 in September 2018. And then crypto winter set in, and within weeks the companymarket cap was sliced nearly in half as crypto miners canceled their orders and inventories at Nvidia started building up a glut of chips.
Since that nadir in late 2018, the company has mostly been on the upswing as it has pushed expansion into a variety of other verticals like automotive, most notably by announcing the purchase of Israeli chip maker Mellanox for $6.9 billion in an all cash deal.
So with its latest earnings announcement coming after the bell yesterday, the big questions were how it was continuing to navigate chip inventories, and whether its transaction with Mellanox would close. The company ultimately presented a bit of a mixed bag, and Wall Street seems to have barely budged on the stock price as we all wait resolution on some of the key questions facing the company.
Before we dive into the analysis, first the high level numbers for Q3, which ended on October 27: top-line revenues declined slightly to just above $3 billion, from roughly $3.2 billion in the year ago quarter. Gross profits were flat from a year ago, but net income was down 27% to $899 million, mostly due to higher R-D costs and lower income from operations. Earnings per share was $1.47, down from $2.02 a year ago.
Now though, there were some more interesting takeaways from the results beyond the sort of lukewarm numbers emanating off the income statements.
China trade war still affecting Nvidia through Mellanox
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The ongoing tension in Hong Kong between the government and pro-democracy protesters continues to spill into the tech domain.
Rise, which is among the largest tech conferences in Asia, will not run next year as planned due to &the ongoing situation in Hong Kong,& according to Web Summit, the Ireland-based company that organizes the show.
The organizer said it is postponing the sixth edition of its annual conference, which is held in Hong Kong, to March 2021 from March 2020. Web Summit, which hosts similar large-scale conferences in other parts of the world, made the announcement today in an email to previous attendees. A spokesperson confirmed the veracity of the email to TechCrunch.
&Over recent months, we have been monitoring the ongoing situation in Hong Kong. Our number one concern is the wellbeing, safety, and security of attendees at our events,& it said in a statement.
&Given the uncertainty of the situation by early 2020 and after consulting with experts and advisories, we have decided to postpone RISE until 2021.&
In recent years, Rise has emerged as one of the largest tech conferences in Asia. Some of its recent speakers have included top executives of Uber, Byju&s, Grab, Gojek, Razor and Stripe, as well as many key partners from top VC funds and officials from several governments.
This year, the conference attracted more than 16,000 attendees ranging from the &worldleading founders, Fortune 500 CEOs, investors, media, and the most promising startups from over 100 countries,& according to official figures provided by Rise.
Web Summitannouncement today comes hours after Clockenflap, the biggest music festival in Hong Kong, was cancelled citing the same reason. American singer-songwriter Halsey, rapper Lil Pump, British band Mumford - Sons and Japanese headbangers Babymetal were set to play at the festival. Several more events have been postponed or cancelled in recent weeks.
Rita Liao contributed to this report.
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Write comment (90 Comments)Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunchventure capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate was in China, so TechCrunchDanny Crichton and Alex took the helm while she was out grilling Lime. So, with our producer (the excellent Mr. Gates) in San Francisco and Danny in New York and Alex in the provinces, we got into the following to start:
- Jetpack Aviation and its seed round to build a flying motorcycle, because of course why not
- An endurance racing startup raising money from Usain Bolt
- Norwestmega new $2B fund
- EQTmega new $750 million rumored European growth fund
- And a new round for Peanut, the social network for mothers
Pivoting into the biggest news from the week, 1Password raised a comically large $200 million Series A round of funding. The firm quite obviously hadn&t raised much capital before, but had grown to be quite large. Hence the large check. Recall that Series A really means a companyfirst institutional round, not a specific dollar range.
Next we discussed DoorDash and its possible $100 million add-on to its $600 million round from earlier this year. The new capital should keep the on-demand technology companyvaluation pegged just above where it was set during its preceding round. So, a down round this is not.
Meanwhile, Docker received a $35 million investment from Benchmark and sold much of its business to Marantis, which has all the appearances of a recap for the formerly high-flying unicorn.
What else? Juul is laying off staff, WeWork is still losing an ocean of dollars and Line is partnering up with Yahoo Japan.
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Read more: WeWork gives 0 forks, and Docker containerizes its future into a casket
Write comment (95 Comments)Image search engine Giphy bills itself as providing a &fun and safe way& to search and create animated GIFs. But despite its ban on illicit content, the site is littered with self-harm and child sex abuse imagery, TechCrunch has learned.
A new report from Israeli online child protection startup L1ght — previously AntiToxin Technologies — has uncovered a host of toxic content hiding within the popular GIF-sharing community, including illegal child abuse content, depictions of rape and other toxic imagery associated with topics like white supremacy and hate speech. The report, shared exclusively with TechCrunch, also showed content encouraging viewers into unhealthy weight loss and glamorizing eating disorders.
TechCrunch verified some of the companyfindings by searching the site using certain keywords. (We did not search for terms that may have returned child sex abuse content, as doing so would be illegal.) Although Giphy blocks many hashtags and search terms from returning results, search engines like Google and Bing still cache images with certain keywords.
When we tested using several words associated with illicit content, Giphy sometimes showed content from its own results. When it didn&t return any banned materials, search engines often returned a stream of would-be banned results.
L1ght develops advanced solutions to combat online toxicity. Through its tests, one search of illicit material returned 195 pictures on the first search page alone. L1ghtteam then followed tags from one item to the next, uncovering networks of illegal or toxic content along the way. The tags themselves were often innocuous in order to help users escape detection, but they served as a gateway to the toxic material.
Despite a ban on self-harm content, researchers found numerous keywords and search terms to find the banned content. We have blurred this graphic image. (Image: TechCrunch)
Many of the more extreme content — including images of child sex abuse — are said to have been tagged using keywords associated with known child exploitation sites.
We are not publishing the hashtags, search terms or sites used to access the content, but we passed on the information to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a national nonprofit established by Congress to fight child exploitation.
Simon Gibson, Giphyhead of audience, told TechCrunch that content safety was of the &utmost importance& to the company and that it employs &extensive moderation protocols.& He said that when illegal content is identified, the company works with the authorities to report and remove it.
He also expressed frustration that L1ght had not contacted Giphy with the allegations first. L1ght said that Giphy is already aware of its content moderation problems.
Gibson said Giphymoderation system &leverages a combination of imaging technologies and human validation,& which involves users having to &apply for verification in order for their content to appear in our searchable index.& Content is &then reviewed by a crowdsourced group of human moderators,& he said. &If a consensus for rating among moderators is not met, or if there is low confidence in the moderatordecision, the content is escalated to Giphyinternal trust and safety team for additional review,& he said.
&Giphy also conducts proactive keyword searches, within and outside of our search index, in order to find and remove content that is against our policies,& said Gibson.
L1ght researchers used their proprietary artificial intelligence engine to uncover illegal and other offensive content. Using that platform, the researchers can find other related content, allowing them to find vast caches of illegal or banned content that would otherwise and for the most part go unseen.
This sort of toxic content plagues online platforms, but algorithms only play a part. More tech companies are finding human moderation is critical to keeping their sites clean. But much of the focus to date has been on the larger players in the space, like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
Facebook, for example, has been routinely criticized for outsourcing moderation to teams of lowly paid contractors who often struggle to cope with the sorts of things they have to watch, even experiencing post-traumatic stress-like symptoms as a result of their work. Meanwhile, GoogleYouTube this year was found to have become a haven for online sex abuse rings, where criminals had used the comments section to guide one another to other videos to watch while making predatory remarks.
Giphy and other smaller platforms have largely stayed out of the limelight, during the past several years. But L1ghtnew findings indicate that no platform is immune to these sorts of problems.
L1ght says the Giphy users sharing this sort of content would make their accounts private so they wouldn&t be easily searchable by outsiders or the company itself. But even in the case of private accounts, the abusive content was being indexed by some search engines, like Google, Bing and Yandex, which made it easy to find. The firm also discovered that pedophiles were using Giphy as the means of spreading their materials online, including communicating with each other and exchanging materials. And they weren&t just using Giphytagging system to communicate — they were also using more advanced techniques like tags placed on images through text overlays.
This same process was utilized in other communities, including those associated with white supremacy, bullying, child abuse and more.
This isn&t the first time Giphy has faced criticism for content on its site. Last year a report by The Verge described the companystruggles to fend off illegal and banned content. Last year the company was booted from Instagram for letting through racist content.
Giphy is far from alone, but it is the latest example of companies not getting it right. Earlier this year and following a tip, TechCrunch commissioned then-AntiToxin to investigate the child sex abuse imagery problem on Microsoftsearch engine Bing. Under close supervision by the Israeli authorities, the company found dozens of illegal images in the results from searching certain keywords. When The New York Times followed up on TechCrunchreport last week, its reporters found Bing had done little in the months that had passed to prevent child sex abuse content appearing in its search results.
It was a damning rebuke on the companyefforts to combat child abuse in its search results, despite pioneering its PhotoDNA photo detection tool, which the software giant built a decade ago to identify illegal images based off a huge database of hashes of known child abuse content.
GiphyGibson said the company was &recently approved& to use MicrosoftPhotoDNA but did not say if it was currently in use.
Where some of the richest, largest and most-resourced tech companies are failing to preemptively limit their platforms& exposure to illegal content, startups are filling in the content moderation gaps.
L1ght, which has a commercial interest in this space, was founded a year ago to help combat online predators, bullying, hate speech, scams and more.
The company was started by former Amobee chief executive Zohar Levkovitz and cybersecurity expert Ron Porat, previously the founder of ad-blocker Shine, after Poratown son experienced online abuse in the online game Minecraft. The company realized the problem with these platforms was something that had outgrown users& own ability to protect themselves, and that technology needed to come to their aid.
L1ghtbusiness involves deploying its technology in similar ways as it has done here with Giphy — in order to identify, analyze and predict online toxicity with near real-time accuracy.
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Read more: Despite bans, Giphy still hosts self-harm, hate speech and child sex abuse content
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