Tag: computing

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Cambridge Uni graphene spin-out bags $16M to get its first product to market

Cambridge, UK based graphene startup, Paragraf, has closed a £12.8 million (~$16M) Series A round of funding led by early stage VC  Parkwalk. Also investing this round: IQ Capital Partners, Amadeus Capital Partners and Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the University of Cambridge, plus several unnamed angel investors. 

The funding will be used to bring the 2015-founded Cambridge University spin out’s first graphene-based electronics products to market — transitioning the startup into a commercial, revenue-generating phase.

When we covered Paragraf’s $3.9M seed raise just over a year ago CEO and co-founder Dr Simon Thomas told us it was looking to raise a Series A ahead of Q3 2019 so the business looks to be right on track at this stage.

During the seed phase Paragraf says it was able to deliver a manufacturing facility, graphene layer production and first device prototypes “significantly” ahead of plan.

It’s now switching focus to products — with strategic volume device production partners, and commercialisation of its first device: A super-high sensitivity magnetic field detector which it says operates over temperature, field and power ranges “that no other device can currently achieve”.

Commenting in a statement, Thomas added: “I am extremely proud of the young team at Paragraf who have collectively delivered the early strategy milestones with great skill. This next phase will allow Paragraf to make these truly game-changing technologies a reality. Paragraf is continually seeking like-minded collaborative development, production and commercial partners to accelerate the delivery of the many exciting electronics technology opportunities graphene has to offer.”

In terms of the touted benefits of graphene, the atom-layer-thick 2D material has long been exciting scientists as a potential replacement for silicon in computer chips — thanks to a raft of key properties including high conductivity, strength and flexibility and thermal integrity. Researchers suggest it could deliver a performance speed increase of up to 1000x, while reducing energy use by up to 50x.

But while excitement about how graphene could transform electronics has been plentiful in the more than a decade since it was discovered, those seeking to commercialize the wonder material have found it challenging to manufacture at commercial grade and scale.

This is where Paragraf aims to come in — claiming to be the first company to deliver IP-protected graphene technology using what it bills as “standard, mass production scale manufacturing approaches”.

It also says its first sensor products have demonstrated “order of magnitude operational improvements over today’s incumbents”.

Such claims of course remain to be tested in the wild but Paragraf isn’t dialling down the hype vis-a-vis the transformative potential of baking graphene into next-gen electronics.

“Achieving large-scale, graphene-based production technology will enable next generation electronics, including vastly increased computing speeds, significantly improved medical diagnostics and higher efficiency renewable energy generation as well as currently unachievable products such as instant charging batteries and very low power, flexible electronics,” it writes.

A year ago Thomas told us Paragraf expected high-tech applications of graphene in consumer technologies to appear in the general market within the next 2-3 years — a timeline that should now have shrunk to just a year or two out.

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Facebook reportedly gets a $5 billion slap on the wrist from the FTC

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has reportedly agreed to end its latest probe into Facebook‘s privacy problems with a $5 billion payout.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the 3-2, party-line vote by FTC commissioners was carried by the Republican majority and will be moved to the Justice Department’s civil division to be finalized.

A $5 billion payout seems like a significant sum, but Facebook had already set aside $3 billion to cover the cost of the settlement and the company could likely make up the figure in less than a quarter of revenue (the company’s revenue for the last fiscal quarter was roughly $15 billion). Indeed, Facebook said in April that it expected to pay up to $5 billion to end the government’s probe.

Facebook reserves $3B for FTC fine, but keeps growing with 2.38B users in Q1

The settlement will also include government restrictions on how Facebook treats user privacy, according to the Journal.

We have reached out to the FTC and Facebook for comment and will update this story when we hear back.

Ultimately, the partisan divide which held up the settlement broke down with Republican members of the commission overriding Democratic concerns for greater oversight of the social media giant.

Lawmakers have been calling consistently for greater regulatory oversight of Facebook — and even a legislative push to break up the company — since the revelation of the company’s mishandling of the private data of millions of Facebook users during the run up to the 2016 presidential election, which wound up being collected improperly by Cambridge Analytica.

The FBI, FTC and SEC are joining the Justice Department’s inquiries into Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica disclosures

Specifically the FTC was examining whether the data breach violated a 2012 consent decree which saw Facebook committing to engage in better privacy protection of user data.

Facebook’s woes didn’t end with Cambridge Analytica . The company has since been on the receiving end of a number of exposes around the use and abuse of its customers’ information and comes as calls to break up the big tech companies have only grown louder.

Facebook hit with three privacy investigations in a single day

The settlement could also be a way for the company to buy its way out of more strict oversight as it faces investigations into its potentially anti-competitive business practices and inquiries into its launch of a new cryptocurrency — Libra — which is being touted as an electronic currency for Facebook users largely divorced from governmental monetary policy.

Potential sanctions proposed by lawmakers for the FTC were reported to include the possibility of elevating privacy oversight to the company’s board of directors and potentially the deletion of tracking data; restricting certain information collection; limiting ad targeting and restricting the flow of user data among different Facebook business units.

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Amazon said to be launch new Echo speaker with premium sound next year

Amazon is reportedly looking to offer an Echo that more directly competes with high-end speakers like the Sonos line of device of Apple’s HomePod, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The speaker should be released sometime next year, according to the sources cited in the report, and will be somewhat wider than the existing Echo models (perhaps more akin to the Echo Sub, pictured above), packing in four separate tweeters to help boost the song quality.

It will, of course, also offer access to the company’s Alexa voice assistant, which is what has propelled Echo to its current level of success. Bloomberg notes that it’s also likely to work better for the high-fidelity audio version of Amazon’s music streaming service that has previously been reported to be in the works.

This could make for an interesting working relationship with some of Amazon’s existing partners, including Sonos, since it sounds like this will be a direct competitor. Newer Sonos speakers, including the Sonos One and Sonos Beam, support Alexa voice commands out of the box. While both Echo devices and Sonos support multi-room streaming and speaker grouping, Sonos has always had far superior audio quality when compared to the Echo hardware – albeit at a premium price.

Sonos, meanwhile, is gearing up to launch speakers powered by its technology with Ikea, with the Symfonisk line that is set for release in August. Smart speakers are a busy space with a lot of money and interest from many companies big and small, but Amazon has a lot working in its favor if it can also produce something that wins on high-quality audio at a reasonable price.

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The Great Hack was one of the wildest movies I saw at Sundance

The trailer is out for Netflix doc The Great Hack, an early cut of which was screened at Sundance this year. I saw that cut during the fest and it was one of the wildest of a second wave of films trying to make sense of what the hell happened with Facebook and the election. A year ago, the tone was different. It was more shock and awe and impressionist art pieces. The Great Hack is part of a new breed that is making a serious attempt to put things into a narrative that normals can understand.

The film anchors itself mostly on two figures, Parsons School of Design Professor David Caroll and ex-Cambridge Analytica employee and ostensible whistleblower Brittany Kaiser, with a cast of other touchstone figures like Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr.

One of the major weaknesses of this kind of story is that it is likely best told in minutes of product meetings and repo commits, rather than attached to human narrative. But that’s not how most humans think and the past ten years have proven that even the people charged with protecting users from these systems have very little idea about how they actually work or how vulnerable they were and continue to be to manipulation. So The Great Hack takes an earnest stab at laying out the basics of how Facebook and other online platforms were manipulated and compromised in order to fuel Cambridge Analytica’s manipulation machine and, by extension, election campaigns and other public sentiment scenarios.

The version I saw did its best to connect these topics with tissue that (mostly, but not always) feels like it is linking the events with human counterparts involved. It does paint some of the journalists and figures in the piece with a bit of a golden brush, and never goes much further than ambivalence when featuring Kaiser, who was by her own admission, right alongside Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, (who plays the villain of the piece (IRL as well as in the doc)) through CA’s most controversial period.

But, if you’ve been following the whole saga and reading news obsessively, not much in here is going to feel like brand new information. It is likely, though that there will be plenty that is new to a broader Netflix audience. If they were able to fix some of the pacing issues and land some of the ‘revelations’ with more punch in the final version I think it may have legs.

The doc hits Netflix on July 24th. You should check it out for yourself.

 

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It’s not just you, Twitter is down

Twitter is currently down across the web.

At about 2:50 pm ET, the desktop and mobile site were down, displaying a “Something is technically wrong” error. The app was also not working.

At the time of writing, Twitter’s status page confirmed there was an “active incident,” adding: “We are currently investigating dependencies for Twitter data. Scope of affected APIs is undetermined at this time.”

A spokesperson for Twitter did not immediately comment.

We’ll have more when we get it.

More on Twitter:

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Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

Apple has released a silent update for Mac users removing a vulnerable component in Zoom, the popular video conferencing app, which allowed websites to automatically add a user to a video call without their permission.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant told TechCrunch that the update — now released — removes the hidden web server, which Zoom quietly installed on users’ Macs when they installed the app.

Apple said the update does not require any user interaction and is deployed automatically.

The video conferencing giant took flack from users following a public vulnerability disclosure on Monday by Jonathan Leitschuh, in which he described how “any website [could] forcibly join a user to a Zoom call, with their video camera activated, without the user’s permission.” The undocumented web server remained installed even if a user uninstalled Zoom. Leitschuh said this allowed Zoom to reinstall the app without requiring any user interaction.

He also released a proof-of-concept page demonstrating the vulnerability.

Although Zoom released a fixed app version on Tuesday, Apple said its actions will protect users both past and present from the undocumented web server vulnerability without affecting or hindering the functionality of the Zoom app itself.

The update will now prompt users if they want to open the app, whereas before it would open automatically.

Apple often pushes silent signature updates to Macs to thwart known malware — similar to an anti-malware service — but it’s rare for Apple to take action publicly against a known or popular app. The company said it pushed the update to protect users from the risks posed by the exposed web server.

Zoom spokesperson Priscilla McCarthy told TechCrunch: “We’re happy to have worked with Apple on testing this update. We expect the web server issue to be resolved today. We appreciate our users’ patience as we continue to work through addressing their concerns.”

More than four million users across 750,000 companies around the world use Zoom for video conferencing.

Zoom patches Mac client after flaw allowed websites to turn on webcams without permission

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Flaws in hospital anesthesia and respiratory devices allow remote tampering

Security researchers have found a vulnerability in a networking protocol used in popular hospital anesthesia and respiratory machines, which they say if exploited could be used to maliciously tamper with the devices.

Researchers at healthcare security firm CyberMDX said that the protocol used in the GE Aestiva and GE Aespire devices can be used to send commands if they are connected to a terminal server on the hospital network. Those commands can silence alarms, alter records — and can be abused to change the composition of aspirated gases used in both the respirator and the anesthesia devices, the researchers say.

Homeland Security is expected to release an advisory later on Tuesday.

“The devices use a proprietary protocol,” said Elad Luz, CyberMDX’s head of research. “It’s pretty straightforward to figure out the commands.”

One of those commands forces the device to use an older version of the protocol — which is still present in the devices to ensure backwards compatibility, said Luz. Worse, none of the commands requires any authentication, he said.

“On every version, you can first send a command to request to change the protocol version to the earliest one, and then send a request to change gas composition,” he said.

“As long the device is ported to the network through a terminal server, anyone familiar with the communication protocol can force a revert and send a variety of illegitimate commands to the machine,” he said.

In other words, the devices are far safer if they’re not connected to the network.

CyberMDX disclosed the vulnerabilities to GE in late October 2018. GE said versions 7100 and 7900 of the Aestiva and Aespire models are affected. Both models are deployed in hospitals and medical facilities across the U.S.

GE spokesperson Amy Sarosiek told TechCrunch: “After a formal risk investigation, we have determined that this potential implementation scenario does not introduce clinical hazard or direct patient risk, and there is no vulnerability with the anesthesia device itself.”

GE said it based its assessment of no risk to patient care on international healthcare safety standards and testing maximum variation in parameter modification from the disclosed concern. “Our assessment does not lead us to believe there are patient safety issues,” the spokesperson said.

But the company declined to say how many devices are affected but that the ability modify gas composition is no longer available on systems sold after 2009.

It’s the second set of vulnerabilities in as many months released by CyberMDX. In June the research firm found vulnerabilities in a widely used medical infusion pump.

A widely used infusion pump can be remotely hijacked, say researchers

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Apple stops selling the 12-inch MacBook, a computer you either loved or were confused by

Apple officially stopped selling the 12-inch MacBook today, a computer that hasn’t had an update since June 2017 and that is also maybe one of the most contentious Macs in Apple’s lineup. The 12-inch MacBook at one time seemed like Apple’s path forward (plenty of Apple fans and analysts saw it as a sign of things to come when it launched in 2015), but ultimately ended up representing some of Apple’s biggest challenges with its Macs in general.

The biggest indicator that Apple felt the MacBook was a showcase and crucial product was the name – it was just THE MacBook, without any addition epithets or qualifiers like “Air” or “Pro” (both of which predated its existence. And when it debuted, it brought a number of firsts for Apple’s laptop lineup, including USB-C for both data and power, a keyboard with butterfly mechanisms, a Force Touch trackpad and a new way of “terracing” batteries that allowed Apple to maximize the power available to the diminutive notebook without making any compromises on size.

For sheer portability and screen-to-size ratio, the MacBook was an absolute feat. But this computer was one of Apple’s boldest statements yet when it came to a separation from current standards and opinions about what users did and didn’t need in a laptop. It only came with a single USB-C port (‘just one!’ people gasped, and that’s for power, too!); the butterfly keyboard was strange and different. This last thing would later prove possibly Apple’s biggest technical gaffe in terms of fundamental component design, which has impact even today in that the company released brand new computers using butterfly keyboards and immediately added them to an extended keyboard replacement program.

The MacBook also always lagged significantly behind its Pro and Air companions in terms of processor power, thanks to the energy-sipping Intel chips required in its construction to minimize heat. As a former MacBook owner myself, it was enough that you noticed the chug when you were doing stuff that wasn’t necessarily heavy-duty, and painfully apparent if you used the little notebook simultaneously with a home desktop, for instance.

But the MacBook was also excellent in its own way. It was so portable as to be almost forgotten as an addition to a bag. It was maybe the ultimate pure writing notebook, because that’s not something that ever felt the lack of processor power under the hood. And as often maligned as it was for being a single-port machine (besides the headphone jack, which is now a luxury in the smartphone world), there was a certain amount of focus necessitated by this monk-like approach to I/O.

Ultimately, the MacBook resembles the original MacBook Air more than anything – an oddball that had both lovers and haters, but that didn’t meet the needs or expectations of the masses. Like the Air, the MacBook could rise from the ashes with a future incarnation, too – perhaps one made possible by the much-speculated future Apple transition to ARM processor architecture. Or maybe it’ll just make way for an ever-evolving iPad powered by the more sophisticated iPadOS coming this fall.

Regardless, the MacBook was an eccentric machine that I enjoyed using (and was potentially considering using again pending an update), so here’s hoping it’s not gone forever.

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Box CEO Aaron Levie is coming to TC Sessions: Enterprise

Box co-founder, chairman and CEO Aaron Levie took his company from a consumer-oriented online storage service to a publicly-traded enterprise powerhouse. Launched in 2005, Box today has over 41 million users and the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies use its service. Levie will join us at TC Sessions: Enterprise for a fireside chat about the past, present and future of Box, as well as the overall state of the SaaS and cloud space.

Levie, who also occasionally contributes to TechCrunch, was a bit of a serial entrepreneur before he even got to college. Once he got to the University of Southern California, the idea for Box was born. In hindsight, it was obviously the right idea at the right time, but its early iterations focused more on consumers than business users. Like so many other startups, though, the Box team quickly realized that in order to actually make money, selling to the enterprise was the most logical — and profitable — option.

Before going public, Box raised well over $500M from some of the most world’s most prestigious venture capital firms. Box’s market cap today is just under $2.5 billion, but more than four years after going public, the company like many Silicon Valley unicorns both private and public still regularly loses money. 

Early Bird Tickets are on sale today for just $249 – book here before prices go up by $100!

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Google debuts ‘Code with Google’ coding education resource for teachers

Google is offering a new coding resource for educators via ‘Code with Google,’ which collects Google’s own free course curriculum on teaching computer science, and a variety of programs to help students learn to code or build on their existing skills, with stuff for people at all levels of ability.

The ‘Code with Google’ resources extend beyond just learning, however, and include potential scholarships, for instance, was well as summer programs, internships and residencies.

In a blog post, Google VP of Education and University Relations Maggie Johnson noted that while recognition of the importance of computer science across all levels of education is relatively high, the actual availability of courses that include hands-on programming for students is surprisingly low, and generally only accessible to students in more affluent districts with access to more resources.

All of Google’s ‘Code with Google’ resources are free, in keeping with may of its other educational offerings, as it continues to drive its education tech leadership position combined with affordable Chromebooks for schools. Google also announced a $1 million grant to the Computer Science Teachers Association alongside the unveiling of this new resource.

Google is smart to continue to approach its education strategy through free resources and easy-to-use, cloud-based software that is accessible to a broad range of both educators and students at all skill and expertise levels.