Tag: TechCrunch Mixtape

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Mixtape podcast: Tech’s concern for the homeless

Welcome to the latest episode of TechCrunch Mixtape with Megan Rose Dickey and myself. This week we talk about mental illness within the homeless population, specifically how people can help situations that are typically addressed by police.

Neil Shah, CEO of Concrn, joined us in the studio to talk about the ups, downs and ups again of leading an app that lacks the appeal of many Silicon Valley upstarts.

Billed as the “compassionate alternative to 911,” Concrn allows users to report a homeless person who is experiencing distress due to mental illness. Rather than involving 911, a call to Concrn will alert trained employees who are then dispatched to help de-escalate the situation, helping to ensure their safety — and hopefully keep them out of the system.

“I started working in homeless services; I started helping people get jobs,” Shah tells us. “And one of the things I noticed was that certain people from the homeless community were fully capable — they just needed to get connected to services, connected to job opportunities. Get some training.”

The company has experienced some growing pains in its relatively short life. It tried to partner with the San Francisco Police Department last fall, but the partnership never came to fruition.

“We are on pause [in San Francisco] and we have been since December,” Shah says. “I was disheartened at first because I felt like we failed in some ways there. But what I realized more is that for so many different factors, SF actually is not a good place for us to operate right now.”

So the company turned its attention to the smaller city across the bay.

“We feel like the Oakland community was way more open to something like this in general.”

Shah was also on a panel at Disrupt SF about creating a lifeline in communities. Check it out below. And click play above to listen to this week’s episode.

And if you haven’t subscribed to Mixtape yet, what are you waiting for? Find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, CastBox or whichever other podcast platform you can find.

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Mixtape podcast: Instacart’s apologetic week

It’s that time of the week again when Megan Rose Dickey and I talk about the good and could-be-better tech companies. This week, we talked about Instacart  href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/05/instacart-faces-class-action-lawsuit-regarding-wages-and-tips/">getting caught shorting its shoppers out of dough they rightfully deserved. Of course the company apologized for its “misguided” approach. Which at least sounds better than apologizing for getting caught — and getting caught, the company did.

And wouldn’t you know it, scooter drama persists in San Francisco. The city this week shot down an appeal by JUMP to let it deploy its Uber-run scooters. The company it seems could have filed a better application in the first place, so back to the drawing board it goes to try to convince the municipality to relent.

Finally this week we talk about Tyra Banks’s Modelland, a physical space that will open in Santa Monica, California, later this year. It will give visitors an opportunity to experience life in a tech environment. I am intrigued at what this could be.

Click play above to listen to this week’s episode. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? Find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, CastBox or whatever other podcast platform you can find.

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Mixtape Podcast: Oracle’s alleged $400M issue with underrepresented groups

Screen time for kids, corporations allegedly not paying people from underrepresented groups and IBM offers some hope for the future of facial recognition technology: These are the topics that Megan Rose Dickey and I dive into on this week’s episode of Mixtape.

According to research by psychologists from the University of Calgary, spending too much time in front of screens can stung the development of toddlers. The study found that kids 2-5 years old who engage in more screen time received worse scores in developmental screening tests.” We talk a bit about this then wax nostalgically about “screen time” of yore.

We then turn to a filing against Oracle by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs that states the enterprise company allegedly withheld upwards of $400 million to employees from underrepresented minority groups. The company initially declined to comment, but then thought better of itself and returned the very next day with its thoughts on the matter.

And finally, IBM is trying to make facial recognition technology a thing that doesn’t unfairly target people of color. Technology! The positive news comes a week after Amazon shareholders demanded that the company stop selling Rekognition, its very own facial recognition tech that it sells to law enforcement and government agencies.

Click play above to listen to this week’s episode. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? Find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, CastBox or whatever other podcast platform you can find.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and that meme life

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mixtape, the podcast that goes a bit behind the headlines to bring tech to culture.

This week Megan Rose Dickey and I welcome Tiana Kara, the head of partnerships and growth at #builtbygirls (which, like TechCrunch, is owned by Verizon Media Group). The organization connects girls and women between the ages of 15 and 22 with mentors of all stripes in the tech industry based on their interests.

The idea here is that not all tech jobs include coding, and #builtbygirls wants all young girls who want in the industry to know that. The question that always comes up is why is it so hard hire diverse staffs.

“What we’re doing is making it a little bit polarizing,” Kara tells us. “We’re telling them, go out and become an engineer versus everything that’s a part of you can be amplified by tech. So take that and then add it to your life versus go down this one pathway.”

“Through the programs we’ve created,  we’ve been able to help them see a real future for themselves that they can define.”

We also take a look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her near-perfect ability to troll the GOP through her social media presence. Sparking our conversation, as well as Catherine Shu’s look into Ocasio-Cortez’s internet prowess, was a story about AOC voicing her support of the transgender youth group Mermaids on Twitch.

And finally, we already knew that the algorithms of some of those DNA services can yield different results. But it’s harder to take when they’re twins.

Click play above to listen to the full episode. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, get on over to your favorite podcast platform, whether it be Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, CastBox, Spotify or whatever else you use.

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CES and its sex tech fail

We’re coming to you with another episode of Mixtape, the TechCrunch podcast that takes a peek behind the headlines that go beyond tech.

This week, Megan Rose Dickey and I get into a discussion about women’s sexuality, because the world’s biggest “consumer electronics show” revoked an innovation award from Lora DiCarlo, a company that created a sex toy for women. In its initial objection, the CTA cited a clause that entries they believed “in their sole discretion to be immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with the CTA’s image will be disqualified.” That’s not great. Of course it walked the comments back, saying that the product, called Osé, didn’t fit into an existing product category. Except that the product falls squarely in the robotics category.

We also discussed robot delivery dogs, because those things don’t seem like they’re ever going to go away. And finally, people continue to do stupid “Bird Box” challenges based on dumb ideas they have after watching Netflix’s hit movie starring Sandra Bullock. Stop it.

Click play above to listen to the full episode. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, get on over to your favorite podcast platform, whether it be Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, CastBox or whatever else you use.