Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’

What Robinhood did to democratize buying individual stocks, Titan wants to do for investing in a managed portfolio. Instead of being restricted to rich accredited investors willing to pour $5,000 or even $500,000 into a traditional hedge fund that charges 2 percent fees and 20 percent of profits, Titan lets anyone invest as little as $1,000 for just a 1 percent fee while keeping all the profits. Titan picks the top 20 stocks based on data mined from the most prestigious hedge funds, then invests your money directly in those with personalized shorts based on your risk profile.

Titan has more $10 million under management after quietly spinning up five months ago, and this week the startup graduates from Y Combinator. Now Titan is ready to give upscale millennials a more sophisticated way to play the markets.

This startup is hot. It refused to disclose its funding, likely in hopes of not tipping off competitors and incumbents to the opportunity it’s chasing. But it’s the buzz of YC, with several partners already investing their own money through Titan. When you consider Stanford-educated free stock-trading app Robinhood’s stunning $5.6 billion valuation thanks to its disruption of E*Trade, it’s easy to imagine why investors are eager to back Titan’s attack on other financial vehicles.

“We’re all 28 to 30 years old,” says co-founder Clayton Gardner about his team. “We want to actively invest and participate in the market but most of us who don’t have experience have no idea what we’re doing.” Most younger investors end up turning to family, friends or Reddit for unreliable advice. But Titan lets them instantly buy the most reputable stocks without having to stay glued to market tickers, while using an app to cut out the costs of pricey brokers and Wall Street offices.

Titan co-founders (from left): Max Bernardy, Clayton Gardner, Joe Percoco

“We all came from the world of having worked at hedge funds and private equity firms like Goldman Sachs and Blackstone. We spent five years doing that and ultimately were very frustrated that the experiences and products we were building for wealthy people were completely inaccessible to people who weren’t rich or didn’t have a fancy suit,” Gardner recalls. “Instead of charging high fees, we can use software to bring the products directly to consumers.”

How Titan works

Titan wants to build BlackRock for a new generation, but its origin is much more traditional. Gardner and his co-founder Joe Percoco met on their first day of business school at UPenn’s Wharton (of course). Meanwhile, Titan’s third co-founder, Max Bernardy, was studying computer science at Stanford before earning a patent in hedge fund software and doing engineering at a few startups. The unfortunate fact is the world of finance is dominated by alumni from these schools. Titan will enjoy the classic privilege of industry connections as it tries to carve out a client base for a fresh product.

“We were frustrated that millennials only have two options for investing: buying and selling stocks themselves or investing in a market-weighted index,” says Gardner. “We’re building the third.”

Titan’s first product isn’t technically a hedge fund, but it’s built like one. It piggybacks off the big hedgies that have to report their holdings. Titan uses its software to determine which are the top 20 stocks across these funds based on turnover, concentration and more. All users download the Titan iOS app (no Android for now), fund their account and are automatically invested into fractional shares of the same 20 stocks.

Titan keeps 1 percent of whatever you earn in profit. There is a minimum $1,000 investment, so some younger adults may be below the bar. “We’re targeting a more premium millennial for start. A lot of our early users are in the tech field and are already investing,” says Gardner.

For downside protection, Titan collects information about its users to assess their risk tolerance and hedge their investment by shorting the bottom 0 to 20 percent of the market so they’ll earn some if everything crashes. Rather than Titan controlling the assets itself, an industry favorite custodian called Apex keeps them secure. The app uses 256-bit encryption and SSL for data transfers, and funds are insured up to $500,000.

How have its bets and traction been doing? “We’ve been pleasantly surprised so far,” Gardner beams, noting Titan’s thousands of clients. It claims it’s up 10 percent year-to-date and up 33 percent in one year compared to the S&P 500’s 2 percent year-to-date and 22 percent in one year. Charging a fee on profits rather than on how much users invest aligns Titan and its clients around success.

But beyond the demographic and business model, it’s the educational elements that set Titan apart. Users don’t have to hunt online for investment research. Titan compiles it into deep dives into top stocks like Amazon or Comcast, laying out investment theses for why you should want your money in “the everything store” or “a toll road for the Internet.” Through in-app videos, push notifications and reports, Titan tries to make its users smarter, not just richer.

With time and funding, “Eventually we hope to launch other financial products, including crypto, bonds, international equities, etc.,” Percoco tells me. That could put Titan on a collision course with Wealthfront, Coinbase and the recently crypto-equipped Robinhood, as well as direct competitors like asset managers BlackRock and JP Morgan.

“If we fast-forward 10 to 20 years in the future, millennials will have inherited $10 trillion, and at this rate they’re not equipped to handle that money,” says Gardner. “Financial management isn’t something taught in school.”

Worryingly, when I ask what they see as the top threats to Titan, the co-founders exhibited some Ivy League hubris, with Gardner telling me, “Nothing that jumps out…” Back in reality, building software that reliably prints money is no easy feat. A security failure or big drop could crater the app’s brand. And if its education materials are too frothy, they could instill blind confidence in younger investors without the cash to sustain sizable losses.

Hopefully if finance democratization tools like Titan and Robinhood succeed in helping the next generations gather wealth, a new crop of families will be able to afford the pricey tuitions that reared these startups’ teams.

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How to Trace Emails Back to Their Source IP Address

The first thing you do when you hear that email notification is check the sender, right? It is the quickest way to figure out who the email is from, as well as the likely content.

But did you know each email comes with a lot more information than what appears in most email clients? There’s a host of information about the sender included in the email header—information you can use to trace the email back to the source.

Here’s how to trace that email back to where it came from, and why you might want to.

Why Trace an Email Address?

Before learning how to trace an email address, let’s consider why you would do it in the first place.

In this day and age, malicious emails are all too frequent. Scams, spam, malware, and phishing emails are a common inbox sight. If you trace an email back to its source, you have a slight chance of discovering who (or where!) the email comes from.

In other cases, you can trace the origin of an email to block a persistent source of spam or abusive content, permanently removing it from your inbox; server administrators trace emails for the same reason.

How to Trace an Email Address

You can trace an email address to its sender by looking at the full email header. The email header contains routing information and email metadata—information you don’t normally care about. But that information is vital to tracing the source of the email.

Most email clients don’t display the full email header as standard because it is full of technical data and somewhat useless to an untrained eye. However, most email clients do offer a way of checking out the full email header. You just need to know where to look, as well as what you’re looking at.

• Gmail Full Email Header: Open your Gmail account, then open the email you want to trace. Select the drop-down menu in the top-right corner, then Show original from the menu.
• Outlook Full Email Header: Double-click the email you want to trace, the head to File > Properties. The information appears in the internet headers
• Apple Mail Full Email Header: Open the email you wish to trace, then head to View > Message > Raw Source.

Of course, there are countless email clients. A quick internet search will reveal how to find your full email header in your client of choice. Once you have the full email header open, you’ll understand what I meant by “full of technical data.”

Understanding the Data in a Full Email Header

It looks like a lot of information but consider the following: you read in chronologically from bottom to top (i.e., oldest information at the bottom), and that each new server the email travels through adds Received to the header. Check out this sample email header taken from my MakeUseOf Gmail account:

Gmail Email Header Lines

There’s a lot of information. Let’s break it down. First, understand what each line means (reading from bottom to top).

• Reply-To: The email address you send your response too.
• From: Displays the message sender; very easy to forge.
• Content type: Tells your browser or email client how to interpret the content of the email. Most common character sets are UTF-8 (seen in the example) and ISO-8859-1.
• MIME-Version: Declares the email format standard in use. The MIME-Version is typically “1.0.”
• Subject: The subject of the email contents.
• To: The intended recipients of the email; may show other addresses.
• DKIM-Signature: DomainKeys Identified Mail authenticates the domain the email was sent from and should protect against email spoofing and sender fraud.
• Received: The “Received” line lists each server that the email travels through before hitting your inbox. You read “Received” lines from bottom to top; the bottom-most line is the originator.
• Authentication-Results: Contains a record of the authentication checks carried out; can contain more than one authentication method.
• Received-SPF: The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) forms part of the email authentication process that stops sender address forgery.
• Return-Path: The location where non-send or bounce messages end up.
• ARC-Authentication-Results: The Authenticated Receive Chain is another authentication standard; ARC verifies the identities of the email intermediaries and servers that forward your message to its final destination.
• ARC-Message-Signature: The signature takes a snapshot of the message header information for validation; similar to DKIM.
• ARC-Seal: “Seals” the ARC authentication results and the message signature, verifying their contents; similar to DKIM.
• X-Received: Differs to “Received” in that it is considered non-standard; that is to say, it might not be a permanent address, such as a mail transfer agent or Gmail SMTP server. (See below.)
• X-Google-Smtp-Source: Shows the email transferring using a Gmail SMTP server.
• Delivered-To: The final recipient of the email in this header.

Finding the Original Sender of an Email

To trace the IP address of the original email sender, head to the first Received in the full email header. Alongside the first Received line is the IP address of the server that sent the email. Sometimes, this appears as X-Originating-IP or Original-IP.

Find the IP address, then head to MX Toolbox. Enter the IP address in the box, change the search type to Reverse Lookup using the drop-down menu, then hit Enter. The search results will display a variety of information relating to the sending server.

Unless the originating IP address is one of the millions of private IP addresses. Then you will meet the following message:

IP ranges 10.0.0.0-10.255.255.255, 172.16.00-172.31.255.255, 192.168.0.0-192.168.255.255, and 224.0.0.0-239.255.255.255 are private. IP address lookups for those ranges will not return any results.

3 Useful Header Analyzers and IP Tracers

Of course, there are some handy tools out there that automate this process for you. It is handy to learn about full email headers and their contents, but sometimes you need quick information.

Check out the following header analyzers:

• GSuite Toolbox Messageheader
• MX Toolbox Email Header Analyzer
• IP-Address Email Header Trace (email header analyzer + IP address tracer)

The results don’t always match up though. In the below example, I know that the sender is nowhere near the alleged location stated as Ashburn, Virginia:

Can You Really Find Someone’s Address?

There are instances where tracing an IP address through the email header is useful. A particularly irritating spammer perhaps, or the source of regular phishing emails. Certain emails will only come from certain locations; your PayPal emails won’t originate in China, for instance.

However, as it is trivially easy to spoof email headers, take all the results you find with a pinch of salt.

Read the full article: How to Trace Emails Back to Their Source IP Address

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What happens when hackers steal your SIM? You learn to keep your crypto offline

A year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today. Hackers swapped my T-Mobile SIM card without my approval and methodically shut down access to most of my accounts and began reaching out to my Facebook friends asking to borrow crypto. Their social engineering tactics, to be clear, were laughable but they could have been catastrophic if my friends were less savvy.

Flash forward a year and the same thing happened to me again – my LTE coverage winked out at about 9pm and it appeared that my phone was disconnected from the network. Panicked, I rushed to my computer to try to salvage everything I could before more damaged occurred. It was a false alarm but my pulse went up and I broke out in a cold sweat. I had dealt with this once before and didn’t want to deal with it again.

Sadly, I probably will. And you will, too. The SIM card swap hack is still alive and well and points to one and only one solution: keeping your crypto (and almost your entire life) offline.

Trust No Carrier

Stories about massive SIM-based hacks are all over. Most recently a crypto PR rep and investor, Michael Terpin, lost $24 million to hackers who swapped his AT&T SIM. Terpin is suing the carrier for $224 million. This move, which could set a frightening precedent for carriers, accuses AT&T of “of fraud and gross negligence.”

From Krebs:

Terpin alleges that on January 7, 2018, someone requested an unauthorized SIM swap on his AT&T account, causing his phone to go dead and sending all incoming texts and phone calls to a device the attackers controlled. Armed with that access, the intruders were able to reset credentials tied to his cryptocurrency accounts and siphon nearly $24 million worth of digital currencies.

While we can wonder in disbelief at a crypto investor who keeps his cash in an online wallet secured by text message, how many other servicse do we use that depend on emails or text messages, two vectors easily hackable by SIM spoofing attacks? How many of us would be resistant to the techniques that nabbed Terpin?

Another crypto owner, Namek Zu’bi, lost access to his Coinbase account after hackers swapped his SIM, logged into his account, and changed his email while attempting direct debits to his bank account.

“When the hackers took over my account they attempted direct debits into the account. But because I blocked my bank accounts before they could it seems there are bank chargebacks on that account. So Coinbase is essentially telling me sorry you can’t recover your account and we can’t help you but if you do want to use the account you owe $3K in bank chargebacks,” he said.

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Now Zu’bi is facing a different issue: Coinbase is accusing him of being $3,000 in arrears and will not give him access to his account because he cannot reply from the hacker’s email.

“I tried to work with coinbase hotline who is supposed to help with this but they were clueless even after I told them that the hackerchanged email address on my original account and then created a new account with my email address. Since then I’ve been waiting for a ‘specialist’ to email me (was supposed to be 4 business days it’s been 8 days) and I’m still locked out of my account because Coinbase support can’t verify me,” he said.

It has been a frustrating ride.

“As an avid supporter and investor in crypto it baffles me how one of the market leaders who just supposedly launched institutional grade custody solutions can barely deal with a basic account take-over fraud,” Zu’bi said.

How do you protect yourself?

I’ve been using Trezor hardware wallets for a while, storing them in safe places outside of my home and maintaining a separate record of the seeds in another location. I have very little crypto but even for a fraction of a few BTC it just makes sense to practice safe storage. Ultimately, if you own crypto you are now your own bank. That you would trust anyone – including a fiat bank – to keep your digital currency safe is deeply delusional. Heck, I barely trust Trezor and they seem like the only solution for safe storage right now.

When I was first hacked I posted recommendations by crypto exchange Kraken. They are still applicable today:

Call your telco and:

• Set a passcode/PIN on your account

  • Make sure it applies to ALL account changes
  • Make sure it applies to all numbers on the account
  • Ask them what happens if you forget the passcode
    • Ask them what happens if you lose that too

• Institute a port freeze

• Institute a SIM lock

• Add a high-risk flag

• Close your online web-based management account

• Block future registration to online management system

• Hack yo’ self

  • See what information they will leak

  • See what account changes you can make

They also recommend changing your telco email to something wildly inappropriate and using a burner phone or Google Voice number that is completely disconnected from your regular accounts as a sort of blind for your two factor texts and alerts.

Sadly, doing all of these things is quite difficult. Further, carriers don’t make it easy. In May a 27-year-old man named Paul Rosenzweig fell victim to a SIM-swapping hack even though he had SIM lock installed on his account. A rogue T-Mobile employee bypassed the security, resulting in the loss of a unique three character Twitter and Snapchat account.

Ultimately nothing is secure. The bottom line is simple: if you’re in crypto expect to be hacked and expect it to be painful and frustrating. What you do now – setting up real two-factory security, offloading your crypto onto physical hardware, making diligent backups, and protecting your keys – will make things far better for you in the long run. Ultimately, you don’t want to wake up one morning with your phone off and all of your crypto siphoned off into the pocket of a college kid like Joel Ortiz, a hacker who is now facing jail time for “13 counts of identity theft, 13 counts of hacking, and two counts of grand theft.” Sadly, none of the crypto he stole has surfaced after his arrest.

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Netflix Tests Playing Ads Between Episodes

Netflix is testing a new feature which inserts video promos between episodes of the show you’re currently watching. Unsurprisingly, the users who have been involved in the testing have expressed their outrage at what they see as the introduction of adverts.

Unlike some streaming services, such as The Roku Channel, which offers free movies with ads, Netflix charges cold, hard cash. Which means users don’t want to see commercials interrupting their binge-watching marathons. Netflix didn’t get the memo.

Video Promos for Netflix Originals

According to TechCrunch, Netflix is currently testing whether it’s a good idea to show users ads for its own shows in between episodes. Testers report that after an episode ends, a video for a Netflix Original will start playing, with the onus on the user to skip it.

While these video promos are skippable, they’re still an unnecessary intrusion on a binge-watching session. And seeing as the capacity to binge on shows without any interruptions is one of the main reasons to subscribe to Netflix, this hasn’t gone down too well.

@netflix I don’t like these ads you’ve started sliding in between my episodes of The Office! I’m well aware of what originals are on Netflix – don’t interrupt my binge watching to shove them down my throat!

— Googie (@MaximumGoogie) August 17, 2018

Netflix issued a statement saying, “We are testing whether surfacing recommendations between episodes helps members discover stories they will enjoy faster. It is important to note that a member is able to skip a video preview at anytime if they are not interested.”

Netflix said it conducts “hundreds of tests every year so we can better understand what helps members more easily find something great to watch.” And the company believes video promos help people “find something they would enjoy watching even faster.”

Spending Money on Original Programming

Netflix’s intentions may be pure, and the company is merely trying to help its users find new shows to watch. But we doubt it. Netflix is spending a lot of money producing its original programming, and to justify that it needs people to watch those shows.

After the complaints on social media, plus the articles (such as this one) that followed, we suspect this test will come to an abrupt end. However, the streaming service is bound to keep pushing the boundaries to get more users watching more Netflix Originals.

Read the full article: Netflix Tests Playing Ads Between Episodes

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The 20 Best Movies to Watch on Amazon Prime

One of the benefits of an Amazon Prime membership is that you get access to its large catalog of free streaming movies. So what should you watch first?

A good place to start is to sort Amazon Prime Video’s movies by their rating on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). It helps that IMDb is a part of Amazon, and it is a decent way to get a trusted list of movies to watch.

In this article, we found some of the best-rated movies on Amazon Prime Video.

1. The Usual Suspects

• IMDb: 8.6
• Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Often referenced as the greatest plot twist in cinemas, The Usual Suspects is a classic thriller. The police interrogate a low-level gang member, who slowly spills the beans on a massive crime operation. Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey puts in a masterful performance, while director Bryan Singer is on top of his game. Watch this one even if you’ve seen it already. The twist only gets better when you know what’s coming.

2. Raiders Of The Lost Ark

• IMDb: 8.5
• Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

The Indiana Jones franchise brings together two stalwarts of Hollywood, director Steven Spielberg and actor Harrison Ford. As the original tomb raider, Indy goes on wild adventures hunting for treasure, rescuing damsels in distress, meeting sidekicks, and kicking the butt of evil-doers. The best of the series is the first film, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but you can watch all the sequels on Amazon Prime too:

• Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom
• Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
• Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

3. The Big Sick

• IMDb: 7.6
• Rotten Tomatoes: 98%

Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily Gordon turned their real-life story into one of the best recent slice-of-life comedies. Just after they broke up for the first time, Emily got a serious illness, and Kumail had to be a pillar of support for her parents, played by Ray Romano and Holly Hunter. This is perhaps the best film from Amazon Studios so far.

4. The Kid

• IMDb: 8.3
• Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Charlie Chaplin is more renowned for his slapstick comedy, but he gets special recognition among filmmakers as a master of the art. In The Kid, Chaplin plays his classic character, The Tramp, who comes across an abandoned boy and takes him in. It’s a movie with more soul than you’d expect if you view Chaplin as just a comic actor. If this film leaves you wanting more, you can watch Chaplin films on YouTube for free, since they are now in the public domain.

5. Mulholland Drive

• IMDb: 8.3
• Rotten Tomatoes: 83%

When it was released in 2001, Mulholland Drive was critically acclaimed, but few realized it would end up becoming one of the pivotal films of Hollywood. It’s a simple plot of a woman who suffers from amnesia after an accident, and wants to find out who she really is. She teams up with an aspiring actress, and they set off piecing her life back together. Director David Lynch has a knack for bringing out Americana in movies like few others can.

6. Raging Bull

• IMDb: 8.2
• Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

When director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro join forces, you are almost guaranteed a masterpiece. Raging Bull is the story of real-life boxer Jake LaMotta, played by De Niro, and an incredible look at the violence in the lives of boxers, both inside and outside the ring. Admittedly, LaMotta was an extreme case that made for great drama, but you don’t have to look too far among boxers to find similar stories.

7. Manchester By The Sea

• IMDb: 7.8
• Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Lee, an ill-tempered loner, is faced with the sudden death of his brother, and is named the guardian of his nephew. This is a mess of complications for Lee, who has lost three children to a house fire years ago. Casey Affleck’s performance got panned by the critics when the movie was released, but he eventually earned himself the Academy Award for Best Actor.

8. Gone With The Wind

• IMDb: 8.2
• Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara. Based on the classic novel, director Victor Fleming takes you through a torrid affair in the American south during the Civil War. Multiple critics and filmmakers call it the best love story they’ve ever seen on screen. Frankly my dear, you should give a damn.

9. There Will Be Blood

• IMDb: 8.1
• Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Perhaps the best actor in Hollywood today, Daniel Day Lewis provides a once-in-a-lifetime performance as Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector around the Depression era. Director Paul Thomas Anderson adds even more depth to the movie with his expert use of sound, which is taught in film-making schools today. Watch it for the best acting performance you’ll see in a long time.

10. Paper Moon

• IMDb: 8.1
• Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Another film set during the Great Depression, Paper Moon is the tale of a con man who has to deliver an ex-lover’s child to her aunt. But there is a chance that the child may actually be his. Real-life father-daughter duo Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal take you along on their journey as they swindle their way across America.

11. Memories Of Murder

• IMDb: 8.1
• Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

For some time now, Korean cinema has been making movies that seem a few steps ahead of what the rest of the world has. Movies like Oldboy and Infernal Affairs have gotten remade by Hollywood. If you want a taste of Korean cinema, start with Memories of Murder, where three detectives try to find the culprit behind multiple girls showing up raped and murdered. If you aren’t particular about Amazon Prime, then there are some excellent foreign language films on Netflix as well.

12. The Handmaiden

• IMDb: 8.1
• Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Amazon Studios believes in Korean cinema too, backing director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, In The Mood For Love, Lady Vengeance) for his new film. And he delivered in spades with The Handmaiden. Set in the 1930s, when Japan occupied Korea, it’s the tale of a long con that goes awry when feelings get involved. Saying any more would spoil things.

13. Last Flag Flying

• IMDb: 6.9
• Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne star in Richard Linklater’s buddy film from Amazon Studios. The three served together years ago in the Vietnam War, and now Carell asks them to come along for support while going to retrieve the body of his son who was killed in the Iraq War. What follows is classic Linklater material, with a film that is all about the conversations between people.

14. A Christmas Carol

• IMDb: 8.1
• Rotten Tomatoes: 84%

There are plenty of different versions of Charles Dickens’ classic story, and this is one of the best. This 1951 film tells the classic tale of a miser who gets visited by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Add it to your watch list, and when you’re feeling festive, stream it over and over.

15. Into The Wild

• IMDb: 8.1
• Rotten Tomatoes: 82%

Christopher McCandless graduated from college, sold all his possessions, and set off on a cross-country trip to go to Alaska and live in the wilderness. Director Sean Penn retraces McCandless’s journey through the natural beauty of America, while Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder provides a soundtrack for the ages. If you’re inspired by it, you can even retrace McCandless’s steps as one of these famous film routes.

16. Jaws

• IMDb: 8
• Rotten Tomatoes: 97%

Spielberg is one of the biggest directorw in Hollywood for a reason. His filmography reads like a list of must-watch items. Jaws is a classic about three men hunting a great white shark that is attacking people near a beach. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out on perhaps the greatest monster movie of all time. If you’ve seen it already, then you know you should watch it again anyway.

17. High Noon

• IMDb: 8
• Rotten Tomatoes: 96%

What’s a “best movies” list without a classic western? And it doesn’t get more classic than Gary Cooper as Marshall Will Kane, setting up a duel with an outlaw and his gang at high noon in an old town. High Noon served as the inspiration for countless westerns, and Cooper is the quintessential example of the current stereotype of the swashbuckling sheriff. The only person to top him is John Wayne (and there are plenty of John Wayne westerns to watch online).

18. Star Trek

• IMDb: 8
• Rotten Tomatoes: 94%

You can spend ages debating the merits of Star Trek vs. Star Wars, or you can just watch the latest Trek movie franchise right now. The reboot is fantastic and re-imagines several things about Star Trek, so you don’t need to know everything about Star Trek beforehand. Jump in to the Enterprise with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, and stream what so many have streamed before.

19. The Graduate

• IMDb: 8
• Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Few movies encapsulate the non-hippie, non-political side of 1960s America like The Graduate. It mixes comedy, coming of age, and drama without appearing corny. A lot of the scenes might look cliched if you watch them for the first time now, but let the great critic Roger Ebert explain it: “Is ‘The Graduate’ a bad movie? Not at all. It is a good topical movie whose time has passed, leaving it stranded in an earlier age. I give it three stars out of delight for the material it contains; to watch it today is like opening a time capsule.”

20. Chi-raq

• IMDb: 5.7
• Rotten Tomatoes: 81%

An Amazon Originals movie, director Spike Lee’s Chi-raq isn’t for everyone. It shines an unrelenting spotlight on gun violence in the black community in Chicago, with a dark sense of humor laced throughout. It’s an adaptation of Lysistrata, a classic Greek play in which women withhold sex from their partners till they end the violence.

Amazon Has Much More to Watch

While these movies will get you started, there are plenty of other good movies that didn’t make quite the list. To see what’s available on Amazon Prime, use this Movies Included With Prime shortcut, or read our full guide to finding movies available to stream online.

Of course, Amazon Prime Video isn’t all about movies. You should also check out some of the best TV shows to watch on Amazon Prime!

Image Credit: Syda_Productions/Depositphotos

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Safety and inspection bot startup Gecko Robotics adds $7 million to the coffers

Gecko Robotics aims to save human lives at our nation’s power plants with its wall-climbing robots. To continue doing so, the startup tells TechCrunch it has just secured $7 million from a cadre of high-profile sources, including Founders Fund, Mark Cuban, The Westly Group, Justin Kan and Y Combinator.

We first reported on the Pittsburgh-based company when co-founder Jake Loosararian came to the TechCrunch TV studios to show off his device for the camera. Back then, Gecko was in the YC Spring 2016 cohort, working with several U.S. power plants and headed toward profitability, according to Loosararian. 

You can see the original interview below:

The type of robots Gecko makes are an important part of ensuring safety in industrial and power plant facilities as they are able to go ahead of humans to check for potential hazards. The robots can climb tanks, boilers, pipelines and other industrial equipment using proprietary magnetic adhesion, ultra-sonics, lasers and a variety of sensors to inspect structural integrity, according to a company release.

While not cheap — the robots run anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 — they are also obviously a minuscule cost compared to human life.

Gecko robot scaling the wall for a safety inspection at a power plant.

Loosararian also mentioned his technology was faster and more accurate than what is out there at the moment by using machine learning “to solve some of the most difficult problems,” he told TechCrunch.

It’s also a unique enough idea to get the attention from several seasoned investors.

“There has been virtually no innovation in industrial services technology for decades,” Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens told TechCrunch in a statement. “Gecko’s robots massively reduce facility shutdown time while gathering critical performance data and preventing potentially fatal accidents. The demand for what they are building is huge.”

Those interested can see the robots in action in the video below:

Diesel_tank_A from Gecko Robotics, Inc on Vimeo.

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15 Must-Have iMessage Sticker Packs for Fun Conversations

Stickers are downright fun, and way better than using plain old emoji. With the iMessage App Store, Apple has elevated the art of stickers. Now you can send animated stickers, and even place stickers on top of a message like you’d do in real life.

The App Store has a staggering collection of sticker packs. You’ll find everything from cartoons to memes, and of course, cats. Here are 15 packs you should definitely download. Check our guide to installing stickers if you’re new to them.

1. Made With Love

Made With Love is a huge collaboration project between artists, designers, and illustrators. You’ll find more than 50 stickers, all about love, from one artist each. On the surface, it looks like 50 different versions of the heart. But as you look closely, you’ll discover subtle details that convey emotions you perhaps can’t find the right words for.

Download: Made With Love (Free)

2. Cookie Monster Stickers

Who doesn’t like the Cookie Monster? He’s adorable and loves cookies just like most of us. You can easily place Cookie’s googly eyes on anything in your conversation. Peel that cookie-loving goofball and place him on photos, inside bubbles, or even over other stickers. This free pack gives you 20+ stickers, with more (including 15 animated stickers) available from an in-app purchase.

Download: Cookie Monster Stickers (Free, premium version available)

3. Kleptocats

This free sticker pack is a-meow-zing. You’ll find no shortage of cat stickers on offer, but this particular one has the snuggles, naps, hunger, and other feline cuteness combined in various colors and expressions. Let your inner cat person out with these adorable stickers.

Download: Kleptocats (Free)

4. Moonpig

Messaging gets interesting with this sticker pack, as it allows you to personalize the stickers using the company’s own characters. It has an amazing make-it-yourself feature with goofy handwritten fonts along with funny one-liners.

Download: Moonpig (Free)

5. Toca Life Paper Bag Cat

If you’re tired of being a diva, the Paper Bag Cat is your spirit animal. It’s the perfect combination of expressing your grumpiness while you fly around on a slice of pizza. The cat has an interesting story as well, making it easy to relate to these fun stickers.

Download: Toca Life Paper Bag Cat (Free)

6. Powerpuff Girls

Place Blossom, Buttercup, and Bubbles on your bubbles with this pack. Fight the Mojo Jojos in your life by sending them these stickers. It’s easy get the power of nostalgia as well as the Powerpuff Girls to fight the crime of boring messages. Make your conversations, cool, cute, and more importantly—sassy!

Download: Powerpuff Girls (Free)

7. TMNT Stickers

Here’s another one for the cartoon lovers. Your messages are about to get sliced and diced with Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo.

The official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are here to rescue your conversations with their ninja skills. Go ahead, defend yourself with these four heroes against the harsh words of your friends. Cowabunga!

Download: TMNT Stickers (Free)

8. Solid Solids

These adorable solids are perfect for geeks. The sticker pack takes solid shapes and adds a whole lot of personality them. Its shapes are animated, with cute colors.

Some of them are just downright eatable, while the angry cone is intimidating. Get sweet and geeky with these beautiful stickers.

Download: Solid Solids ($1)

9. Buzz Bees

These wonderfully simplistic stickers are an overload of adorable. The app comes with a huge catalog of stickers showing the bees with every expression you can imagine. Noticing the cute tiny details on the stickers will instantly make your day (and the person you’re sending them to).

Download: Buzz Bees (Free)

10. Memes—Rage Comic Stickers

Reacting in memes is the mark of a true friendship. But saving and collecting your own memes for every possible reply is a lot of work. With more than 100 popular memes and faces to choose from, this iMessage app helps you level up your meme game in no time.

Download: Memes—Rage Comic Stickers ($1)

11. Truly Furry

Got a friend who’s both adorable and furry? Your iMessage thread is about to get a lot more vibrant. Truly Furry gives you adorable and colorful fuzzy monsters to brighten up your messages.

They are funny faces with goofy reactions to help your inner furry-self communicate. The sticker pack is beautifully designed and comes with an array of vibrant pop colors.

Download: Truly Furry (Free)

12. Rejoinders

These stickers are filled with sarcasm, from gaping maws to menacing smirks. Rejoinders is an Old Masters pack featuring several centuries’ worth of art history. It includes around 50 faces to express your mood swings and emotions over messages. Send them to your friends and enemies alike.

Download: Rejoinders ($1)

13. WWF Origami

Share the love for animals and origami through these neatly designed stickers by the World Wildlife Fund. This pack is inspired by the WWF Together app and has many animals showcased in origami structures.

Download: WWF Origami (Free)

14. Asthetixx

This pack adds a range of beards, caps, and other funky elements to flair up the photos you send to your friends. They are useful to mask the identities of certain people, especially since you can put pink mustaches on pictures.

Download: Asthetixx (Free)

15. Yippies!

Spread the happiness in everything you discuss with these stickers. If you find texting too basic, use the cute language of Yipee and attain inner happiness. You’ll be one step closer to inner peace.

Download: Yippies! (Free)

iMessage Apps Are Versatile

Granted, iMessage stickers are amazing. But did you know that iMessage apps can do a lot more? You can use third-party iMessage apps to share music, translate text, and even share files from cloud storage services like Dropbox.

Read the full article: 15 Must-Have iMessage Sticker Packs for Fun Conversations

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Hotspot Shield Is An Easy-To-Use VPN With Elite Security

Antivirus Software Isn’t Enough: 5 Things You Must Do to Avoid Malware

Just bought a new notebook or desktop computer and have concerns about online security? Worried about losing valuable study time to viruses and other online infections?

Staying safe and secure online is simple, as long as you take the right precautions. Besides installing an online security or antivirus suite, follow these steps for safer computing.

1. Catch Phishing Emails With a Spam Filter

Over half of all emails are spam, and of those, 50 percent are carrying malicious attachments. That’s an unbelievably powerful method of delivering of malware infections to computers: just via email. As such, it’s vital that you take steps to ensure that the emails that make it into your inbox are safe.

You don’t have any control over the emails that are sent to you. Sadly, once your email address ends up in a database, it’s a free-for-all as far as the scammers are concerned. They’re going to target you with as much rubbish as possible, hoping that you click, and they get lucky.

Phishing emails, which typically strongly resemble official emails and include a link to a spoof website that fools you into entering your personal details, are particularly concerning. While browser based email solutions like Gmail and Outlook are good at blocking these, they’re not perfect.

As such, it’s worth using an email client and employing a spam filter to help in blocking these messages. Don’t leave anything to chance. Oh, and don’t open attachments from unrecognized email accounts!

2. Start Using Encrypted Email

Using Gmail or Outlook, or the email service your ISP enforces is all very well, but it’s probably not secure. Having a username, password, perhaps two-factor authentication and a HTTPS connection is great, but these days, it’s not enough.

We know that Gmail displays adverts, and these are chosen by Google based on the contents of your inbox. So, what can you do about this? Well, the smart money is on using encrypted email.

At one time, this meant you and the recipient both being signed up to the same email service. Fortunately, this is no longer the case.

Several encrypted email providers are available, each offering varying levels of security. You should consider each service on merit, if encrypting your email sounds like a secure option. Just be sure to use a secure password to decrypt your messages!

Of these top options, ProtonMail is often cited as the very best encrypted email provider. However, we’re also fans of Disroot, which combines free encrypted email with a secure cloud drive. This includes an online office suite.

3. Only Use Trusted Browsers and Extensions

Staying safe online means being able to browse the web without risk of danger from malware, scammers, ransomware, and all of the other risks.

Besides email, most issues threatening your online security come via your browser. As such, it is vital to ensure that you’re using a browser that receives regular updates. Mozilla Firefox is a good example of a reliable browser that is constantly updated thanks to the hard work of its development team.

You might also rely on Google Chrome, although the privacy aspects of this browser with regard to the way in which Google tracks your behavior may well discourage you.

But it doesn’t end with the browser.

A wide selection of extensions (also known as “add-ons”) are available for you to install, but you shouldn’t just go ahead and install what looks good. Instead, narrow your selection, researching the reputation of the extensions or add-ons; ensure the choice you make is good. Don’t simply install the first add-ons that does the job you’re looking for.

Limiting your use of add-ons to specific purposes from reputable developers is a wise tactic.

4. Check Links Before You Click

Once upon a time, the web was more or less safe. Sure, there were scam websites, malware-loaded adverts, dangerous popups, and insecure browsers, but…

Okay, fair point: the web has almost never been safe. Which is why link checking tools are so vital. It is a source of constant amazement that so few people take the time to install a link checking tool. Many security suites include these, and they’re even available as browser extensions.

What better way to stay secure online than to have a tool that quickly checks if the link you’re about to click is safe?

Don’t leave your homepage without a link checker. Don’t want to use a browser extension? These link checking sites can help.

5. Browse via Proxy Server or VPN

If you want to access the web without being seen online—perhaps to avoid identity theft—then you should consider a proxy server, or a VPN (Virtual Private Network).

A proxy server (in which you access a website via an anonymizing service—the proxy), will also let you access restricted or censored information, prevent any sort of profiling of your online activity, and enable you to conduct sensitive research. You should also be able to engage in anonymous messaging, should that be necessary.

While most of these uses for a proxy server might seem more suited to freedom fighters in oppressive states, awareness of how privacy is breached on a minute-by-minute basis is useful.

However, it is worth considering a VPN if you’re planning on regular proxy use. A VPN employs encryption (typically 256-bit AES), obfuscating your online activity from outside observers. These days, it’s non-negotiable if you want improved security and privacy on the web.

Not sure which VPNs are reputable? We highly recommend ExpressVPN, HotSpot Shield, and CyberGhost.

Don’t Just Install a Security Suite: Think “Secure”

So many people install security software on their computers and think that the job is done. But online security is about far more than viruses and malware.

That is why installing an antivirus tool or security suite is just the first step in keeping your PC secure. After that, it’s about developing good habits and awareness. To repeat, you should:

1. Use a spam filter
2. Rely on email encryption
3. Switch to a trustworthy browser
4. Check links before clicking
5. Browse the web via proxy server or VPN

Looking for a security suite to get started with? We’ve sorted out the best security software to help you tighten up your online security.

Read the full article: Antivirus Software Isn’t Enough: 5 Things You Must Do to Avoid Malware

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Watch Nvidia unveil the RTX 2080 live right here

Nvidia is taking advantage of the Gamescom in Germany to hold a press conference about its future graphics processing units. The conference will start at 6 PM in Germany, 12 PM in New York, 9 AM in San Francisco.

Just a week after the company unveiled its new Turing architecture, Nvidia could share more details about the configurations and prices of its upcoming products — the RTX 2080, RTX 2080 Ti, etc.

The name of the conference #BeForeTheGame suggests that Nvidia is going to focus on consumer products and in particular GPUs for gamers. While the GeForce GTX 1080 is still doing fine when it comes to playing demanding games, the company is always working on new generations to push the graphical boundaries of your computer.

According to Next INpact, you can expect two different products this afternoon. The GeForce RTX 2080 is going to feature 2,944 CUDA cores with 8GB of GDDR6. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti could feature as many as 4,352 CUDA cores with 11GB of GDDR6.

Nvidia already unveiled Quadro RTX models for professional workstations last week. The company is expecting significant performance improvements with this new generation as those GPUs are optimized for ray tracing — the “RT” in RTX stands for ray tracing.

While ray tracing isn’t new, it’s hard to process images using this method with current hardware. The RTX GPUs will have dedicated hardware units for this task in particular.

And maybe it’s going to become easier to buy GPUs now that the cryptocurrency mining craze is slowly fading away.

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10 AmazonBasics Tech Products That Are Actually Pretty Good

Walmart completes its $16 billion acquisition of Flipkart

Walmart announced over the weekend that it has completed a $16 billion investment in Flipkart that sees it become the majority owner of the Indian e-commerce company.

The deal was first revealed back in May and now it has closed after receiving the necessary approvals. It sees Walmart take a 77 percent share in the company, buying out a number of prior investors in the process and expanding its rivalry with Amazon to a new horizon. The investment capital also includes $2 billion in new equity funding which will be used for growth while the transaction was structured so that Flipkart itself can still go public. That latter point could mean that the Indian firm must go public within four years, as TechCrunch previously reported.

Flipkart will continue to be run by its leadership with Tencent and Tiger Global retaining board seats. Those two have remained investors in the business, alongside others that include Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and Microsoft. Walmart previously suggested that other allies would come aboard as investors. Google was strongly mooted, but so far there have been no strategic additions.

Walmart said that its plans for India will include investments that “support national initiatives and will bring sustainable benefits in jobs creation, supporting small businesses, supporting farmers and supply chain development and reducing food waste.”

As we previously reported, it also plans to use Flipkart as a “key center of learning” for the rest of its business across the world, and that includes its home market.

“Not only is [Flipkart] innovative [with the] problem-solving culture that they have, but they are doing some great work both in the AI space, how they are using data across their platforms but particularly in terms of the payment platform that they’ve created through PhonePe. All of those things we can learn from for the future and see how we can leverage those around the international markets and potentially into the US as well,” Walmart COO Judith McKenna said back in May when the deal was announced.

Flipkart’s business could also get a whole lot more transparent since its quarterly results will be reported as part of Walmart’s earnings. Although they will be part of its international business so that might provide some protection from direct scrutiny.

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Dark Matter Candidates

Dark Matter Candidates