Pakistan bans TikTok over ‘immoral and indecent’ videos

Pakistan has banned popular short video app TikTok in the nation, citing circulation of videos that it deemed “immoral and indecent.”

The move comes months after the South Asian country raised serious concerns about the nature of some videos on ByteDance’s app and the impact they posed on society.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the country’s telecommunication authority, said in a statement Friday evening that despite the warnings and months-long time, TikTok “failed to comply with the instructions, therefore, directions were issued for blocking of TikTok application in the country.” The authority had received a “number of complaints from different segments of the society” over the videos, it said.

Some individuals in Pakistan, a nation with about 75 million internet users, told TechCrunch that the TikTok app and its website were already inaccessible to them.

“TikTok has been informed that the authority is open for engagement and will review its decision subject to a satisfactory mechanism by TikTok to moderate unlawful content,” said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority in a statement.

The move from Pakistan comes months after its neighboring nation, India, banned TikTok, Bigo and 57 other apps developed by Chinese firms over cybersecurity concerns. Prior to the ban, TikTok identified India — where it had amassed over 200 million monthly active users — as its biggest market outside of China. Like in India, TikTok is also immensely popular in Pakistan, said Danish Khalid, an executive at Bykea, a Karachi-headquartered ride-hailing startup.

And then there is the U.S., the biggest market by revenue for TikTok, where also the app’s future remains uncertain.

Trump administration’s TikTok ban has been delayed

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High-profile startup execs back Indian influencers platform CreatorOS

The advent of low-cost Android smartphones and the world’s cheapest mobile data has paved the way for millions of social media influencers in India to amass a following of tens of millions of users in recent years.

These influencers, also known as creators, share their daily vlogs, thoughts on a wide range of issues, and some engage with big brands to help sell their products to niche, loyal audiences. E-commerce giant Flipkart and scores of several other businesses today work with these influencers.

But India’s ban on TikTok, the Chinese short-video app that reached more than 200 million users in the country, in late June unearthed some of the biggest problems these creators face today: They are too reliant on a handful of platforms, and their work structure is not well organized.

A new startup believes it has built the platform to help creators assume more control over their work. And a number of high-profile entrepreneurs agree.

On Friday, Madhavan Malolan announced CreatorOS, a platform that enables creators to build, manage and grow their businesses. About 1,000 creators including a number of short-film makers, teachers, consultants have already joined the platform, Madhavan, who co-founded the startup, formerly known as Socionity, in January this year. Prior to CreatorOS, he worked at a number of firms including Microsoft.

“We believe that these creators will become an entrepreneur in the coming decade. So we are creating tools, connections and infrastructure that they will need to run their digital businesses. Currently, there is a lot of spray and pray happening on the creator’s part. They are producing videos in hopes that they go viral so more people in the industry discover them,” said Madhavan in an interview with TechCrunch.

The marquee tool on CreatorOS today is an app-builder that allows creators to build their own apps, push and sell their content in it, and build their own communities. Madhavan said CreatorOS has overly reduced the efforts that need to go into building an app to simply drag and drop.

The startup said today it has also raised $500,000 from a clutch of high-profile names. Some of the angel investors include Phanindra Sama (founder and former chief executive of online ticket booking platform RedBus.in), Gaurav Munjal (co-founder and chief executive of online learning platform Unacademy), Kalyan Krishnamurthy (chief executive of Flipkart Group), Sujeet Kumar (co-founder of business-to-business marketplace Udaan), Vidit Aatrey (co-founder and chief executive of social e-commerce Meesho), Vivekananda Hallekere (co-founder and chief executive of mobility firm Bounce), and Alvin Tse (GM of Xiaomi Indonesia).

Madhavan said that the trust that so many established entrepreneurs showed in CreatorOS convinced him that he did not need to engage with VC firms yet and instead put the entire focus on serving creators. He said the ban on TikTok and how so many startups are trying to scale their short-video apps has created an immense opportunity for CreatorOS.

The startup expects to have more than 5,000 creators on its platform by the end of the year. It is working with creators to understand and build more features that would benefit them, said Madhavan.

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Devialet announces wireless earbuds

High-end speaker manufacturer Devialet is launching its first pair of earbuds called Devialet Gemini. The in-ear earbuds feature active noise canceling and cost £279 in the U.K. — they will be available in the coming weeks.

The Devialet Gemini are completely wireless, which means that there’s no cord between each earbud, like on Apple’s AirPods. The company has developed three new patents for the product.

They feature cascading decompression chambers, which means that they should stick in your ears and provide adequate pressure. In-ear earbuds require a good seal.

Image Credits: Devialet

There are two microphones in each earbud for the active noise cancelation feature and a dedicated microphone for calls and other voice interactions. Like on the AirPods Pro, there are multiple ANC modes. You can remove background noise altogether or activate transparency modes so that you can hear what’s happening around you.

You can choose between three levels of ANC and two levels of transparency mode. The company is releasing a mobile app so that you can control those settings. There’s also a touch button at the rear of the earbuds that you can use to control music playback, noise cancelation or voice assistants.

The earbuds automatically adjusts the audio signal when the earbud moves. It uses a microphone to detect a change in frequency. The app can also tell you if you’re using the right tip for your ear.

The company promises 8 hours of battery life without ANC and 6 hours with ANC activated. The case provides 3.5 charges and works with wireless chargers using the Qi standard or a USB-C cable.

Image Credits: Devialet

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Daily Crunch: Waymo opens up driverless ride-hailing

Alphabet’s self-driving technology company hits a major milestone, Apple TV+ extends its free subscription period and Affirm files to go public. This is your Daily Crunch for October 8, 2020.

The big story: Waymo opens up driverless ride-hailing

Waymo hit a major milestone today: It’s offering fully driverless rides to (some) members of the public.

While the Alphabet-owned company has offered plenty of self-driving rides before, they usually came with a human in the driver’s seat for safety. Members of the early rider program who’d signed nondisclosure agreements were able to try out fully driverless rides — but again, they had to sign NDAs first.

Today, the company said members of its more open Waymo One program in Phoenix will be able to go fully driverless, and to take friends and family with them. And over the next few weeks, the program will open up to even more passengers.

The tech giants

Apple is extending some Apple TV+ subs through February 2021 for free — Apple gave away a free year of Apple TV+ to new device purchasers last year; now it’s bumping those subs out to February.

Amazon debuts its first fully electric delivery vehicle, created in partnership with Rivian — The van’s unique features include sensor-based highway driving and traffic assist features.

IBM plans to spin off infrastructure services as a separate $19B business — The company said this will allow it to focus on newer opportunities in hybrid cloud applications and artificial intelligence.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Instacart raises $200M more at a $17.7B valuation — It’s not hard to trace a connection between COVID-19 and Instacart’s business results.

Affirm files confidentially to go public — The news comes after the impending debut was reported in July.

Delivery startup goPuff raises $380M at a $3.9B valuation — GoPuff delivers products like over-the-counter medicine, baby food and alcohol (basically, the stuff you’d buy at a convenience store) in 30 minutes or less.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Investors, founders report hot market for API startups — Startups that deliver their service via an API are having a moment.

Tech’s role in the COVID-19 response: Assist, don’t reinvent — Speakers at Disrupt explained how technology companies have taken a backseat to frontline workers, rather than attempting to “solve” the issues on their own.

These 3 factors are holding back podcast monetization — Fundamental fixes could unleash the channel’s revenue potential.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

General Motors finally gets serious about in-car tech, taps Unreal Engine for next-gen interface — Matt Burns writes that GM’s current crop of in-car user interfaces is among the worst on the market.

Consumers spent a record $28B in apps in Q3, aided by pandemic — According to a new report from App Annie, consumers in the third quarter downloaded 33 billion new apps globally.

US Space Force is getting an immersive space sim training tool built in part by the VFX studio behind ‘The Mandalorian’ — The U.S. Space Force obviously won’t be able to train most of their service people in actual space, so the new arm of America’s defense forces has tasked Slingshot Aerospace to create a VR space sim.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Google Assistant can now control Android apps

Google today announced it’s making it possible to use the voice command “Hey Google” to not just open but also perform specific tasks within Android apps. The feature will be rolled out to all Google Assistant-enabled Android phones, allowing users to launch apps with their voice as well as search inside apps or perform specific tasks — like ordering food, playing music, posting to social media, hailing a ride, and more.

For example, users could say something like, “Hey Google, search cozy blankets on Etsy,” “open Selena Gomez on Snapchat,” “start my run with Nike Run Club,” or “check news on Twitter.”

At launch, Google says these sorts of voice commands will work with more than 30 of the top apps on Google Play in English globally, with more apps coming soon. Some of the supported apps today include Spotify, Snapchat, Twitter, Walmart, Discord, Etsy, MyFitnessPal, Mint, Nike Adapt, Nike Run Club, eBay, Kroger, and Postmates, Wayfair, to name a few.

If the specific voice command you would use to perform a common task is a little clumsy, the feature will also allow you to create a custom shortcut phrase instead. That means, instead of saying “Hey Google, tighten my shoes with Nike Adapt,” you could create a command that just said, “Hey Google, lace it.”

To get started with shortcuts, Android users can say “Hey Google, show my shortcuts” to get to the correct Settings screen.

The feature is similar to Apple’s support for using Siri with iOS apps, which also includes the ability to open apps, perform tasks and record your own custom phrase.

In Google’s case, the ability to perform tasks inside an app is implemented on the developer’s side by mapping users’ intents to specific functionality inside their apps. This feature, known as App Actions, allows users to open their favorite apps with a voice command. And, with the added functionality, lets users say “Hey Google” to search within the app or to open specific app pages.

Google says it has grown its catalog to include over 60 intents across 10 verticals, including Finance, Ridesharing, Food Ordering, Fitness, and now, Social, Games, Travel & Local, Productivity, Shopping and Communications, too.

To help users understand how and when they can use these new App Actions, Google says it’s building touchpoints in Android that will help them learn when they use certain voice commands. For instance, if a user said “Hey Google, show me Taylor Swift,” it may highlight a suggestion chip that will guide the users to opening the search result on Twitter.

Image Credits: Google

Related to this news, Google says it also released two new English voices for developers to leverage when building custom experiences for Assistant on Smart Displays, alongside other developer tools and resources for those building for displays.

The Google Assistant upgrade for apps was one of several Android improvements Google highlighted today. The company also says it’s adding screen-sharing to Google Duo, expanding its Verified Calls anti-spam feature to more devices (Android 9 and up), and updating the Google Play Movies & TV app to become the new “Google TV” app, announced last week.

On the accessibility front, it’s introducing new tools for hearing loss with Sound Notifications and others for communicating using Action blocks, aimed at people with cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, autism, aphasia, and other speech related disabilities.

The features are available now.

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Waymo starts to open driverless ride-hailing service to the public

Waymo, the Google self-driving-project-turned-Alphabet unit, is beginning to open up its driverless ride-hailing service to the public.

The company said that starting today members of its Waymo One service will be able to take family and friends along on their fully driverless rides in the Phoenix area. Existing Waymo One members will have the first access to the driverless rides — terminology that means no human behind the wheel. However, the company said that in the next several weeks more people will be welcomed directly into the service through its app, which is available on Google Play and the App Store.

Waymo said that 100% of its rides will be fully driverless — which it has deemed its “rider only” mode. That 100% claim requires a bit of unpacking. The public shouldn’t expect hundreds of Waymo-branded Chrysler Pacifica minivans — no human behind the wheel — to suddenly inundate the entire 600-plus square miles of the greater Phoenix area.

Waymo has abut 600 vehicles in its fleet. About 300 to 400 of those are in the Phoenix area. Waymo wouldn’t share exact numbers of how many of these vehicles would be dedicated to driverless rides. However, Waymo CEO John Krafcik explained to TechCrunch in a recent interview, that there will be various modes operating in the Phoenix area. Some of these will be “rider only,” while other vehicles will still have train safety operators behind the wheel. Some of the fleet will also be used for testing.

“We’re just ready from every standpoint,” Krafcik told TechCrunch. “And how do we know we’re ready? We’ve had our wonderful group of early riders, who’ve helped us hone the service, obviously not from a safety standpoint because we’ve had the confidence on the safety side for some time, but rather more for the fit of the product itself.” He added that these early riders helped the company determine if the product was “delivering satisfaction and delight for them.”

Later this year, Waymo will relaunch rides with a trained vehicle operator to add capacity and allow us to serve a larger geographical area. Krafcik said the company is in the process of adding in-vehicle barriers between the front row and rear passenger cabin for in-vehicle hygiene and safety.

Waymo operates in about 100-square-mile area. The driverless or “rider only” service area that will be offered to Waymo One members is about 50 square miles, Krafcik said.

Despite the various caveats, this is still a milestone — one of many the company has achieved in the past decade. The past five years has been particularly packed, starting with Steve Mahan, who is legally blind, taking the “first: driverless ride in the company’s Firefly prototype on Austin’s city streets in 2015. More than a dozen journalists experienced driverless rides in 2017 on a closed course at Waymo’s testing facility in Castle; and. Then last November, TechCrunch took one of the first driverless rides in Waymo Pacifica minivan along the public streets of a Phoenix suburb.

The company scaled its commercial product even as these demos and testing continued. In 2017, Waymo launched its early rider program, which let vetted members of the public, who had signed non-disclosure agreements, hail its self-driving cars in the Phoenix area. Those autonomous vehicles all had human safety operators behind the wheel.

Waymo then launched Waymo One, a self-driving ride-hailing service aimed for public use, no NDA strings attached. But again, those rides all had human safety operators in the drivers seat, ready to take over if needed. Waymo slowly moved its early rider program members into the more open Waymo One service. It also started experimenting with charging for rides and expanded its footprint – or geofenced service area. Today, the company charges for rides across all of its programs (early rider and Waymo One) in the Phoenix area. The Waymo One service (with human safety operators) is about 100 square miles in Phoenix suburbs like Chandler.

The first meaningful signs that Waymo was ready to put people in vehicles without human safety operators popped up last fall when members of its early rider program received an email indicating that driverless rides would soon become available.

And they did. These driverless rides were limited and free. And importantly, still fell under the early rider program, which had that extra NDA protection. Waymo did slowly scale until about 5 to 10% of its total rides in 2020 were fully driverless for its exclusive group of early riders under NDA. Then COVID-19 hit and the service was halted. The company has continued testing with its safety drivers in Arizona and California. That has raised some concerns among those workers about the dual issue of catching COVID and dealing with air quality issues caused by wildfires in California.

Waymo said it has added new safety protocols due to COVID-19, including requiring users to wear masks, having hand sanitizer in all vehicles and conducting what Krafcik described as a cabin flush — essentially a four to five increase in air volume sent through the vehicle — after every ride.

Krafcik also said Waymo will soon add the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace to the mix, first testing them on public roads and then adding the vehicles to the early rider program.

Updated: to reflect that the company charges for all rides now in Phoenix. 

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Announcing the 2020 Google PhD Fellows

Posted by Susie Kim, Program Manager, University Relations

Google created the PhD Fellowship Program in 2009 to recognize and support outstanding graduate students who seek to influence the future of technology by pursuing exceptional research in computer science and related fields. Now in its twelfth year, these Fellowships have helped support approximately 500 graduate students globally in North America and Europe, Africa, Australia, East Asia, and India.

It is our ongoing goal to continue to support the academic community as a whole, and these Fellows as they make their mark on the world. We congratulate all of this year’s awardees!

Algorithms, Optimizations and Markets
Jan van den Brand, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Mahsa Derakhshan, University of Maryland, College Park
Sidhanth Mohanty, University of California, Berkeley

Computational Neuroscience
Connor Brennan, University of Pennsylvania

Human Computer Interaction
Abdelkareem Bedri, Carnegie Mellon University
Brendan David-John, University of Florida
Hiromu Yakura, University of Tsukuba
Manaswi Saha, University of Washington
Muratcan Cicek, University of California, Santa Cruz
Prashan Madumal, University of Melbourne

Machine Learning
Alon Brutzkus, Tel Aviv University
Chin-Wei Huang, Universite de Montreal
Eli Sherman, Johns Hopkins University
Esther Rolf, University of California, Berkeley
Imke Mayer, Fondation Sciences Mathématique de Paris
Jean Michel Sarr, Cheikh Anta Diop University
Lei Bai, University of New South Wales
Nontawat Charoenphakdee, The University of Tokyo
Preetum Nakkiran, Harvard University
Sravanti Addepalli, Indian Institute of Science
Taesik Gong, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Vihari Piratla, Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay
Vishakha Patil, Indian Institute of Science
Wilson Tsakane Mongwe, University of Johannesburg
Xinshi Chen, Georgia Institute of Technology
Yadan Luo, University of Queensland

Machine Perception, Speech Technology and Computer Vision
Benjamin van Niekerk, University of Stellenbosch
Eric Heiden, University of Southern California
Gyeongsik Moon, Seoul National University
Hou-Ning Hu, National Tsing Hua University
Nan Wu, New York University
Shaoshuai Shi, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Yaman Kumar, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology - Delhi
Yifan Liu, University of Adelaide
Yu Wu, University of Technology Sydney
Zhengqi Li, Cornell University

Mobile Computing
Xiaofan Zhang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Natural Language Processing
Anjalie Field, Carnegie Mellon University
Mingda Chen, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago
Shang-Yu Su, National Taiwan University
Yanai Elazar, Bar-Ilan

Privacy and Security
Julien Gamba, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Shuwen Deng, Yale University
Yunusa Simpa Abdulsalm, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University

Programming Technology and Software Engineering
Adriana Sejfia, University of Southern California
John Cyphert, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Quantum Computing
Amira Abbas, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Mozafari Ghoraba Fereshte, EPFL

Structured Data and Database Management
Yanqing Peng, University of Utah

Systems and Networking
Huynh Nguyen Van, University of Technology Sydney
Michael Sammler, Saarland University, MPI-SWS
Sihang Liu, University of Virginia
Yun-Zhan Cai, National Cheng Kung University