13 June 2018

The 10 Best Free Search Tools for Windows 10


windows-10-search

Windows 10 isn’t all bad. For example, it introduced a number of helpful File Explorer tricks and lots of new features in the Task Manager, making it one of the most productive versions of Windows so far.

But some aspects still aren’t as good as they can be—like Windows Search. While there have always been some neat Windows Search tips and tricks, it has never been on par with the search features of Mac or Linux. And while Windows 10 did lessen the gap in a lot of ways, it’s still slow and imperfect.

If you find yourself constantly searching for files and folders throughout your system, you may be better off switching to one of these third-party tools instead. Windows Search is only good for basic and casual use.

1. Everything

windows-search-tool-everything

Everything is consistently lauded as one of the fastest search tools for Windows. Using it is as simple as it gets: install it, open the program, and give it a bit to index your entire system. (It can index a fresh Windows install in under a minute.)

Once that’s done, all you have to do is type anything into the text field and you will get instantaneous results as you type. And as long as you allow Everything to sit in the background and monitor system changes, it will always be instantaneous.

Best of all, it’s lightweight and takes up less than 5MB of RAM and 1MB of disk space. This is the absolute best tool to use for old and slow computers.

2. Lookeen

Lookeen does the same thing as Everything, but is a more full-featured solution. It can search for content beyond just file names and it does so with speed. The search window can also show previews of certain file types, even allowing you to edit text files directly.

Lookeen can also search external drives in addition to local ones, and there are a few filter options you can use to narrow down files further than with text queries only.

If you visit the Lookeen site, you’ll have a hard time finding the free version—but a free version does exist! This is not the same thing as the free 14-day trial for the business version.

3. Listary

Of all the software on this list, Listary is probably the most unique. Not only is it extremely minimal in design, but it stays completely out of your way until you need it. When you want to search, just start typing! It’s as easy as that.

And as you type, Listary will show a list of all files on your system that match the query in real-time. Listary can also execute commands like “Open Folder” and “Copy Folder Path”, and you can even use Listary to quickly hop into a different folder just by typing that folder’s name.

Some of its best features require Listary Pro, which is $20. But even with Listary Free, you get a lot of power and flexibility.

4. grepWin

windows-search-tool-grepwin

Back when I was a serious programmer, grepWin was one of the most useful tools I had at my disposal. With it, you can search through any directory tree and it will find files by matching contents with your search query (regular expression are supported).

If you’ve ever used Linux, it’s basically the “grep” command (one of the essential Linux commands to know) but designed for Windows and comes with a nifty interface. So the next time you need to search for a specific line of code or a specific line of documentation, this will cut your search time by orders of magnitude. Seriously!

5. AstroGrep

windows-search-tool-astrogrep

AstroGrep is a great alternative to grepWin in case the latter doesn’t fit your fancy for whatever reasons. It does the same thing—finds files that match your search query by content rather than file name—but is slightly less advanced and easier to use.

You can designate which file types to search, view file contents within AstroGrep itself, and save or print results for later. Potential future features include searching through PDFs, MP3s, ZIPs, RARs, and more.

AstroGrep has been around since 2006 and continues to receive regular updates.

6. SearchMyFiles

windows-search-tool-searchmyfiles

SearchMyFiles may seem helplessly primitive at first glance, but it’s deceptively flexible. Once you get over the slight learning curve, you’ll be able to put together complex search queries using filters and wildcards.

For example, search all files created in the last 15 minutes, between 300 and 600 bytes in size, and containing the word “error”. The application is lightweight and portable (no installation required), so you can carry it around on an USB stick. NirSoft also maintains hundreds of other useful utilities that are all clean, portable, and available free of charge.

7. Copernic Desktop Search

windows-search-tool-copernic

Copernic has been in the search industry since 1996, starting first as a web search engine but eventually becoming known for its spectacular desktop search application. In fact, it’s considered by many as the #1 desktop search tool in the world.

It comes in a free version and a commercial version. Unfortunately, the free version can’t search network drives, external drives, cloud storages, Outlook emails, Lotus notes, and has an index limit of 75,000 files. But for basic home usage, it’s more than enough.

8. Exselo Desktop

windows-search-tool-exselo

Exselo Desktop isn’t as well-known as other desktop search options, which is a shame because it’s actually quite good. It supports powerful search queries, has a simple interface, securely share data, and even integrates with Outlook.

Not only can it search local drives, but Exselo can also comb through network and cloud stores. And best of all, the Free edition is feature complete. The only difference between Free and Enterprise is support for multiple users.

9. Duplicate & Same Files Searcher

windows-search-tool-duplicates

Duplicate & Same Files Searcher is a tiny portable program—less than 1MB in size—that finds all files that are identical by content (not by file name). As such, the scanning process can be a bit slow, but you can filter and set parameters to speed things up.

And not only can the program delete said duplicates, but it can replace them with “hard links” that are basically shortcuts to one single file, thus saving you space without breaking anything in the meanwhile.

Can you guess how much of your hard drive space is wasted by duplicate files? The answer might surprise you. Duplicate files are more common than we tend to think, and if those duplicates are image, audio, or video files, they can take up a LOT of unnecessary space.

10. Registry Finder

windows-search-tool-registry-finder

Registry Finder is a free tool that makes registry navigation easy. It also has the ability to search keys according to when they were last modified, meaning this tool comes in handy when you want to see all recent changes that were made (e.g. for troubleshooting).

Despite the improved search features in Windows 10, the registry is still a bit crude and could use a lot of love. Whether you want to fix errors in the registry or make a few tweaks for usability, the process of finding keys can be slow and tedious—and that’s why Registry Finder really shines.

What’s Your Preferred Windows Search Tool?

For better and faster search results, go ahead and pick one of the above tools. The built-in Windows search is getting better, but there’s still a long way to go before you can rely solely on it.

There might be a lot of things that annoy and frustrate you in Windows 10, but the user base is so large that you’ll always be able to find a third-party software that improves upon Microsoft’s shortcomings. These nifty Windows search utilities are proof of that!

Read the full article: The 10 Best Free Search Tools for Windows 10


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Musical.ly kills its standalone live streaming app Live.ly


Musical.ly is merging the functionality from its two-year old live streaming platform Live.ly into its main app, and has disabled Live.ly’s standalone app as part of the transition process. The Live.ly app will eventually be pulled from the App Store and Google Play, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Instead of being able to go live, Live.ly users are presented with a message about the changes, informing them that live streaming has now moved over to Musical.ly.

This change is also confirmed via Live.ly’s App Store update text, which says:

Live.ly is becoming part of musical.ly!
– You can go live on musical.ly right now! Plenty of live content there!

Live.ly first launched in May 2016, offering Musical.ly users a live streaming platform, where the streams were directly viewable on Musical.ly, as well as within the Live.ly mobile app.

As the video creator streamed, they’d see a count of how many people were watching, and would see hearts float up across the screen when viewers “liked” their content – an experience that’s very similar to Twitter/Periscope and Facebook Live. Viewers could also chat with the streamer, and engage in real-time conversations.

Unfortunately for Live.ly users, there was little warning about the shut down, and it seems that, for some, live streaming on Musical.ly is not working as expected.

One regular Live.ly user posted to YouTube about the shutdown, complaining that after she made the switch to Musical.ly for her live stream as instructed, but no people were online watching and no likes and comments were showing up, either. This appears to be some sort of glitch, as viewers, likes, comments and other Live.ly core features are displaying for others who have been transitioned to the Musical.ly-based live streaming experience.

Not everyone will be able to go live directly on Musical.ly today, as the addition of live streaming support is a phased rollout.

However, the company says it remains committed to investing in live streaming functionality, despite the Live.ly shutdown. We’re told that the majority of live stream viewership was already taking place on Musical.ly’s main app, so it made sense for the company to consolidate the live video alongside the other short, lip sync videos Musical.ly is known for.

The closure of Live.ly is one of the first major changes to the Musical.ly product following its acquisition by Chinese media company Bytedance for up to $1 billion in November 2017.

Under its new ownership, Musical.ly launched a $50 million fund to help build out its creator community, but has also faced criticism for having poor content moderation capabilities – something that’s especially concerning given that a large part of its viewership audience is children.

It is also now facing a new threat: this month, Facebook began testing a Musical.ly competitor called Lip Sync Live.

The increased competition may have played a role in having Musical.ly consolidate its resources in order to focus on its flagship app, not its spinoff.

The main Musical.ly app has a reported 200 million registered users, 60 million of whom are active on a monthly basis.

Live.ly has been downloaded 26 million times to date, 87% on iOS. The U.S. accounts for about 70% of installs, according to data from Sensor Tower.


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N26 launches a revised metal card


Fintech startup N26 is updating its N26 Metal product and launching it tomorrow. You might remember that the company first announced its premium card at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin in December 2017. Shortly after the conference, the card was available in early access for existing N26 Black customers.

But the company had to go back to the drawing board and update the card design. N26 Metal customers had some complaints about the design of the card in particular.

While the original metal card was primarily made of a sheet of tungsten, the metallic part was still surrounded by plastic. Customers complained about scratches and the overall feel of the card.

It didn’t really feel like a metal card. It was more or less a heavy plastic card with a metal core. You could easily get scratches and the MasterCard logo was just a sticker.

Even more surprising, some customers had some issues going through airport security because tungsten was an uncommon material.

At an event in Berlin, the company announced a revised version of N26 Metal. The front of the card is going to be made out of actual metal. The MasterCard logo will be engraved. And the name of the customer is moving to the back of the card.

You can join the waiting list now and customers will start getting the new metal card tomorrow.

But N26 Metal isn’t just a fancy card. For around €15 per month, you get all the advantages of N26 Black as well as partner offerings.

These offerings include the basic $45 per month WeWork subscription so that you can access a WeWork office for free for one day per month and pay for extra days. You also get 10 percent off hotel bookings on Hotels.com, promo codes for Drivy, Babbel and other services. The company says that there will be new offerings in the coming months.


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Musical.ly kills its standalone live streaming app Live.ly


Musical.ly is merging the functionality from its two-year old live streaming platform Live.ly into its main app, and has disabled Live.ly’s standalone app as part of the transition process. The Live.ly app will eventually be pulled from the App Store and Google Play, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Instead of being able to go live, Live.ly users are presented with a message about the changes, informing them that live streaming has now moved over to Musical.ly.

This change is also confirmed via Live.ly’s App Store update text, which says:

Live.ly is becoming part of musical.ly!
– You can go live on musical.ly right now! Plenty of live content there!

Live.ly first launched in May 2016, offering Musical.ly users a live streaming platform, where the streams were directly viewable on Musical.ly, as well as within the Live.ly mobile app.

As the video creator streamed, they’d see a count of how many people were watching, and would see hearts float up across the screen when viewers “liked” their content – an experience that’s very similar to Twitter/Periscope and Facebook Live. Viewers could also chat with the streamer, and engage in real-time conversations.

Unfortunately for Live.ly users, there was little warning about the shut down, and it seems that, for some, live streaming on Musical.ly is not working as expected.

One regular Live.ly user posted to YouTube about the shutdown, complaining that after she made the switch to Musical.ly for her live stream as instructed, but no people were online watching and no likes and comments were showing up, either. This appears to be some sort of glitch, as viewers, likes, comments and other Live.ly core features are displaying for others who have been transitioned to the Musical.ly-based live streaming experience.

Not everyone will be able to go live directly on Musical.ly today, as the addition of live streaming support is a phased rollout.

However, the company says it remains committed to investing in live streaming functionality, despite the Live.ly shutdown. We’re told that the majority of live stream viewership was already taking place on Musical.ly’s main app, so it made sense for the company to consolidate the live video alongside the other short, lip sync videos Musical.ly is known for.

The closure of Live.ly is one of the first major changes to the Musical.ly product following its acquisition by Chinese media company Bytedance for up to $1 billion in November 2017.

Under its new ownership, Musical.ly launched a $50 million fund to help build out its creator community, but has also faced criticism for having poor content moderation capabilities – something that’s especially concerning given that a large part of its viewership audience is children.

It is also now facing a new threat: this month, Facebook began testing a Musical.ly competitor called Lip Sync Live.

The increased competition may have played a role in having Musical.ly consolidate its resources in order to focus on its flagship app, not its spinoff.

The main Musical.ly app has a reported 200 million registered users, 60 million of whom are active on a monthly basis.

Live.ly has been downloaded 26 million times to date, 87% on iOS. The U.S. accounts for about 70% of installs, according to data from Sensor Tower.


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Uber Lite Shrinks the App for Emerging Countries


Uber has now gained a foothold in dozens of countries around the world, and ferries millions of people around every month. However, in some emerging countries, Uber isn’t the biggest player, with local firms having outmaneuvered the American company.

This is a problem Uber is facing head-on, by either acquiring or merging with said companies. However, it’s now trying a different approach in order to reach the masses, releasing a lightweight version of its app simply called Uber Lite.

Uber Lite Does the Heavy Lifting

Uber Lite is a simplified version of the Uber app the company actually built from scratch. The app is designed to work on any Android handset, no matter how decrepit. It also works on any network, saves storage space, and uses minimal data.

This is Uber for people in emerging countries, who may be stuck using old phones and limited data plans. And while it was designed in India—and being launched there first—Uber Lite will eventually be made available in other countries around the world.

Uber Lite is a 5MB download, which compares admirably to the 181MB of the full version. Uber Lite also boasts an impressive 300-millisecond response time to make the booking process faster. It’s the reimagined user interface that bring the biggest changes, however.

Uber Lite detects your current location and offers popular pickup points for you to choose from. It also suggests possible destinations, and gets smarter the more you use it. Finally, maps are optional, with a simple progress bar helping you track your ride.

Uber Focuses on its Emerging Future

Uber has had its fair share of problems over the years, and especially in India. However, at the very least Uber Lite suggests that Uber is intent on building its business in emerging countries. After all, that’s where its next wave of riders reside.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll know that Uber Lite is just the latest in
a line of lightweight apps. There’s a whole slew of lightweight apps designed to help you save on storage space and mobile data usage. So why not give them a go.

Read the full article: Uber Lite Shrinks the App for Emerging Countries


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Twitter wants to inject live events into every area of the app


The chronological news feed has been a bit of a looming specter for Twitter. Sure, it’s their bread-and-butter, but it only works for users who are willing to put in the time to prune their own feeds and strip away follows while constantly keeping an eye out for new accounts. For Twitter, a major challenge is discovering how they can update the experience for casual users who follow a few accounts but haven’t gotten deep into the discovery phase yet.

Twitter’s efforts to double-down on surfacing live events coverage and catering to users’ specific areas of interest have been an evolving mission for the company, but today, they are announcing some of their boldest moves yet to change how the app grows to understand a user base on their interactions.

Twitter is making some major updates to the Explore feed, which will now surface curated pages dedicated to news stories surrounding breaking news, live events and stories in a way that will drive a closer fit to individual users’ interests and help them find more of what’s happening across the site. Some of these changes will also be popping up at the top of user home timelines in a bid to draw users down exploratory rabbit holes that expose them to new accounts and new communities.

There’s going to be a big mix of what is being curated by humans and algorithms as the company looks to marry the editorial voice it has built up in Moments with its human curation team with a highly targeted algorithm that can find interests and grab the latest tweets that meet them. It’s all about striking a balance and understanding the limits of curation in each situation, the company tells me.

“We wouldn’t, for example, set a human on the task of trying to identify all of the relevant live conversations coming out in real time in a particular situation so that’s where algorithmic curation comes in,” Twitter’s Director of Curation Joanna Geary told TechCrunch.

For Twitter, it’s a logical evolution of Moments, which were introduced in 2015 to drive conversations and curate stories from the Twitterverse.

Now, for something like a breaking news story, you’ll be able to find some of the most important tweets that have really driven the story alongside a tab to explore what is coming in live. The company will be testing a topic feed dedicated to the 2018 World Cup that will organize scores, plug in live video and integrate photos and reaction in a way curated by man and machine.

Twitter has been exploring the promises of the algorithmic feed for quite some time, but it’s opted to push most of these minor updates to the Explore feed or just to the top of users’ main feeds with brief “what you missed” interactions. This isn’t changing with today’s updates either — the company isn’t shifting the fundamentals of how your feed flows back in time; instead, it’s seeking to offer snippets that help you move on tangents for discovery.

“For us, the heart of Twitter is all about discussing and discovering what’s happening right now,” Twitter Senior Director of Product Management Sriram Krishnan told TechCrunch. “People’s home timelines aren’t changing, we are going to show these experiences at the top of your home timeline but everything below it will continue to be the same.”

While users of the service have gotten used to the frequent changes in the company’s Explore tab, what will be new are the push notifications that Twitter is sending to users to direct them toward new or developing stories. Doing this in a highly targeted capacity is going to be pretty critical for Twitter. People are already annoyed by the constant notifications from social media services that they explicitly okayed, when there’s deviation from that people can get upset. Users will be able to shut off these types of notifications if Twitter surfaces stuff that isn’t relevant or welcome, but there’s a lot of potential for payoff if the company does this well.

All of these changes to the Explore tab will be rolling out to users in the U.S. and Canada in the next few months, the company says, while integrations in the home feed are simply “coming soon.”

The impact for the company could be substantial here as they continue to chase turning MAUs to DAUs, but it all depends on how much they can get to know the person at the tail-end of all of the follows, likes and retweets and see whether they can bring them something that matters.


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Back Market raises $48 million for its refurbished device marketplace


If you’ve tried selling your old smartphone on a refurbishment website, chances are you ended up with a dozen browser tabs comparing prices. French startup Back Market is taking advantage of this fragmented industry to create a marketplace and aggregate all refurbishers on a single online platform.

The startup just raised $48 million (€41 million). Groupe Arnault, Eurazeo, Aglaé Ventures and Daphni participated in today’s funding round.

Back in May, the company told me that it was working with over 270 factories. Back Market has generated over $110 million in gross merchandise volume over the past three years. The service is now live in France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Italy. The company just expanded to the U.S.

“Before, refurbishment was just a thing for tech savvy people and tech bloggers,” co-founder and chief creative officer Vianney Vaute told me. “With Back Market, it becomes a mainstream alternative.”

Working with multiple factories is also a competitive advantage when it comes to pricing, fail rate and quality assurance. Back Market has an overview on the industry and can choose to work with some partners and leave underperforming ones behind. The startup needs to build a brand that consumers can trust.

While smartphones and laptops are the most prominent products on the homepage, Back Market also accepts game consoles, TVs, headphones, coffee machines and more. Back Market also sells Apple products refurbished by Apple itself.

Now that smartphones have become a mature market, many customers aren’t looking for new and shiny devices. Some customers can be perfectly happy with a phone that was released last year or two years ago. It represents an opportunity for Back Market and the refurbishment industry as a whole.


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Ring’s $199 security system will finally ship next month


Way back in October of last year, Ring announced “Ring Protect” — a modular, no contract, DIY home security system.

After a few delays, a bit of legal drama and Ring being acquired for a billion dollars by Amazon, the alarm is finally about to ship — albeit with a slightly different (better!) name.

Ring Protect has been redubbed as the more intuitive Ring Alarm — a better name if only because competitor Nest has both a security product and a totally different product (a smoke detector) called Nest Protect.

Ring’s base level alarm kit starts at $199, which includes a keypad (for arming/disarming the system), one door/window sensor, a motion detector and a range extender. You’ll probably want to add more components, and, fortunately, they’re relatively cheap: another door sensor, for example, is $20, while the motion detectors are $30.

Nest’s competing security system packs a few tricks that Ring’s doesn’t (Nest combined the door/motion sensors into one, for example, and it’s got a fancy RFID system for PIN-free disarming), but it also costs $200 more… and that’s after a $100 price drop that, presumably not by coincidence, just happened yesterday.

The system doesn’t require any sort of contract — but if you want professional monitoring, it’ll be $10 a month. That’s a pretty good deal, especially because if you’ve got any of Ring’s cameras (like its smart doorbell, or its floodlight cameras), that plan includes unlimited video storage for all of ’em.

Ring says it’s got more products on the way to expand the system, including smoke/carbon monoxide detectors and flood sensors.

Ring’s security system is up for pre-order now and, if all goes as planned, will start shipping on July 4th.


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Audit of NHS Trust’s app project with DeepMind raises more questions than it answers


A third party audit of a controversial patient data-sharing arrangement between a London NHS Trust and Google DeepMind appears to have skirted over the core issues that generated the controversy in the first place.

The audit (full report here) — conducted by law firm Linklaters — of the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust’s acute kidney injury detection app system, Streams, which was co-developed with Google-DeepMind (using an existing NHS algorithm for early detection of the condition), does not examine the problematic 2015 information-sharing agreement inked between the pair which allowed data to start flowing.

“This Report contains an assessment of the data protection and confidentiality issues associated with the data protection arrangements between the Royal Free and DeepMind. It is limited to the current use of Streams, and any further development, functional testing or clinical testing, that is either planned or in progress. It is not a historical review,” writes Linklaters, adding that: “It includes consideration as to whether the transparency, fair processing, proportionality and information sharing concerns outlined in the Undertakings are being met.”

Yet it was the original 2015 contract that triggered the controversy, after it was obtained and published by New Scientist, with the wide-ranging document raising questions over the broad scope of the data transfer; the legal bases for patients information to be shared; and leading to questions over whether regulatory processes intended to safeguard patients and patient data had been sidelined by the two main parties involved in the project.

In November 2016 the pair scrapped and replaced the initial five-year contract with a different one — which put in place additional information governance steps.

They also went on to roll out the Streams app for use on patients in multiple NHS hospitals — despite the UK’s data protection regulator, the ICO, having instigated an investigation into the original data-sharing arrangement.

And just over a year ago the ICO concluded that the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust had failed to comply with Data Protection Law in its dealings with Google’s DeepMind.

The audit of the Streams project was a requirement of the ICO.

Though, notably, the regulator has not endorsed Linklaters report. On the contrary, it warns that it’s seeking legal advice and could take further action.

In a statement on its website, the ICO’s deputy commissioner for policy, Steve Wood, writes: “We cannot endorse a report from a third party audit but we have provided feedback to the Royal Free. We also reserve our position in relation to their position on medical confidentiality and the equitable duty of confidence. We are seeking legal advice on this issue and may require further action.”

In a section of the report listing exclusions, Linklaters confirms the audit does not consider: “The data protection and confidentiality issues associated with the processing of personal data about the clinicians at the Royal Free using the Streams App.”

So essentially the core controversy, related to the legal basis for the Royal Free to pass personally identifiable information on 1.6M patients to DeepMind when the app was being developed, and without people’s knowledge or consent, is going unaddressed here.

And Wood’s statement pointedly reiterates that the ICO’s investigation “found a number of shortcomings in the way patient records were shared for this trial”.

“[P]art of the undertaking committed Royal Free to commission a third party audit. They have now done this and shared the results with the ICO. What’s important now is that they use the findings to address the compliance issues addressed in the audit swiftly and robustly. We’ll be continuing to liaise with them in the coming months to ensure this is happening,” he adds.

“It’s important that other NHS Trusts considering using similar new technologies pay regard to the recommendations we gave to Royal Free, and ensure data protection risks are fully addressed using a Data Protection Impact Assessment before deployment.”

While the report is something of a frustration, given the glaring historical omissions, it does raise some points of interest — including suggesting that the Royal Free should probably scrap a Memorandum of Understanding it also inked with DeepMind, in which the pair set out their ambition to apply AI to NHS data.

This is recommended because the pair have apparently abandoned their AI research plans.

On this Linklaters writes: “DeepMind has informed us that they have abandoned their potential research project into the use of AI to develop better algorithms, and their processing is limited to execution of the NHS AKI algorithm… In addition, the majority of the provisions in the Memorandum of Understanding are non-binding. The limited provisions that are binding are superseded by the Services Agreement and the Information Processing Agreement discussed above, hence we think the Memorandum of Understanding has very limited relevance to Streams. We recommend that the Royal Free considers if the Memorandum of Understanding continues to be relevant to its relationship with DeepMind and, if it is not relevant, terminates that agreement.”

In another section, discussing the NHS algorithm that underpins the Streams app, the law firm also points out that DeepMind’s role in the project is little more than helping provide a glorified app wrapper (on the app design front the project also utilized UK app studio, ustwo, so DeepMind can’t claim app design credit either).

“Without intending any disrespect to DeepMind, we do not think the concepts underpinning Streams are particularly ground-breaking. It does not, by any measure, involve artificial intelligence or machine learning or other advanced technology. The benefits of the Streams App instead come from a very well-designed and user-friendly interface, backed up by solid infrastructure and data management that provides AKI alerts and contextual clinical information in a reliable, timely and secure manner,” Linklaters writes.

What DeepMind did bring to the project, and to its other NHS collaborations, is money and resources — providing its development resources free for the NHS at the point of use, and stating (when asked about its business model) that it would determine how much to charge the NHS for these app ‘innovations’ later.

Yet the commercial services the tech giant is providing to what are public sector organizations do not appear to have been put out to open tender.

Also notably excluded in the Linklaters’ audit: Any scrutiny of the project vis-a-vis competition law, public procurement law compliance with procurement rules, and any concerns relating to possible anticompetitive behavior.

The report does highlight one potentially problematic data retention issue for the current deployment of Streams, saying there is “currently no retention period for patient information on Streams” — meaning there is no process for deleting a patient’s medical history once it reaches a certain age.

“This means the information on Streams currently dates back eight years,” it notes, suggesting the Royal Free should probably set an upper age limit on the age of information contained in the system.

While Linklaters largely glosses over the chequered origins of the Streams project, the law firm does make a point of agreeing with the ICO that the original privacy impact assessment for the project “should have been completed in a more timely manner”.

It also describes it as “relatively thin given the scale of the project”.

Giving its response to the audit, health data privacy advocacy group MedConfidential — an early critic of the DeepMind data-sharing arrangement — is roundly unimpressed, writing: “The biggest question raised by the Information Commissioner and the National Data Guardian appears to be missing — instead, the report excludes a “historical review of issues arising prior to the date of our appointment”.

“The report claims the ‘vital interests’ (i.e. remaining alive) of patients is justification to protect against an “event [that] might only occur in the future or not occur at all”… The only ‘vital interest’ protected here is Google’s, and its desire to hoard medical records it was told were unlawfully collected. The vital interests of a hypothetical patient are not vital interests of an actual data subject (and the GDPR tests are demonstrably unmet).

“The ICO and NDG asked the Royal Free to justify the collection of 1.6 million patient records, and this legal opinion explicitly provides no answer to that question.”


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7 Great Project Ideas for Using a Raspberry Pi as a Server

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Safety app Watch Out acquires paywall startup BitWall


BitWall, a Bitcoin-focused startup promising to help online publishers make money, has been acquired.

Its new owner is WatchOut, the company behind an app that sends alerts about things like product and food recalls and weather-realted emergencies. It’s not the most obvious acquirer, but the companies say BitWall can help Watch Out improve its data, payments and loyalty systems.

“We are excited to bring BitWall into the Watch Out! ecosystem,” said Watch Out CEO Michael Lucas in the acquisition announcement. “Our mission is to provide a secure consumer-protection platform while delivering hyper-targeted content when and where it matters most, whether that be a safety alert or a digital reward. BitWall and its team help us do that.”

Apparently there’s a TechCrunch connection to the story, too — BitWall co-founder and CEO Nic Meliones told me he first got connected to Watch Out at our Disrupt SF Hackathon in 2014, and he said the company has already been “a great partner” to BitWall.

I first wrote about the startup before the current craze around Bitcoin and cryptocurrency — all the way back in 2013. The idea was to give visitors different ways to access paywalled content, whether that’s making a small payment, promoting the article on Twitter or viewing an ad.

The company’s biggest win was probably a partnership with the Chicago Sun-Times in 2014, where the Sun-Times tested out a paywall that readers could bypass using Bitcoin or tweets. (The Sun-Times’ current paywall plans don’t appear to include BitWall.)

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Meliones said the company’s paywall product will be shut down, with the technology diverted to a yet-to-be-announced product at WatchOut.

Bitwall’s investors include Boost VC, AngelPad, Tim Draper, the Boost Bitcoin Fund.


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Facebook demands advertisers have consent for email/phone targeting


Facebook is hoping to avoid another privacy scandal by adding new accountability and transparency requirements for businesses that use its Custom Audiences too to target you with ads based on your email address or phone number. Starting July 2nd, advertisers will have to declare whether contact info uploaded for ad targeting was collected with proper user consent by them, one of their partners, or both. Users will be able to see this info if they opt to block future ads from that business.

Companies can only share Custom Audiences info with partners like ad agencies if they’re formally connected through Facebook’s business manager tool. And Facebook will start to show advertisers reminders that they need consent for contact info ad targeting and force all users connected to an ad account to confirm these terms.

The new consent tool launch confirms TechCrunch’s scoop from March that Facebook would crack down Custom Audiences targeting without consent. Facebook has always technically required consent, but it hasn’t necesssarily done much to enforce those rules. That same approach to API rules produced the Cambridge Analytica debacle.

Custom Audiences is one of Facebook’s most valuable revenue generators because it allows businesses to hit up their former customers to buy more. A scandal surrounding the targeting mechanism could be seriously detrimental to the social network’s business in a way that the rest of its recent public image problems haven’t, judging by the recovery of Facebook’s share price.

Since 2012, Facebook has offered Custom Audiences as a way for businesses to upload privacy-safe hashed lists of customer contact info. Facebook matches that against its users’ info to show them the business’ ads, rather than companies having to pay to try to reach those people through demographic targeting. That way, a company that already sold you a car and got your email signup could targeting you a few years later with ads to trade in and buy a new vehicle. Businesses can also use Facebook’s lookalikes targeting to reach people with similar characteristics to their existing customers.

Now at least Facebook will show this “Original Data Source” field asking who collected the uploaded phone numbers or emails. Users can check out this info if they click the “Why Am I Seeing This Ads?” button in the drop-down. However, Facebook stops short of scanning the lists for suspicious info, such as blocks of contact info that match hacked or purchased data sets.

That means Facebook is trusting advertisers to tell the truth about consent for targeting…despite them having a massive financial incentive to bend of break those rules. Today’s update will give Facebook more plausible deniability in the event of a scandal, and it might deter misuse. But Facebook is stopping short of doing anything to actually prevent non-consensual ad targeting.


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Facebook demands advertisers have consent for email/phone targeting


Facebook is hoping to avoid another privacy scandal by adding new accountability and transparency requirements for businesses that use its Custom Audiences too to target you with ads based on your email address or phone number. Starting July 2nd, advertisers will have to declare whether contact info uploaded for ad targeting was collected with proper user consent by them, one of their partners, or both. Users will be able to see this info if they opt to block future ads from that business.

Companies can only share Custom Audiences info with partners like ad agencies if they’re formally connected through Facebook’s business manager tool. And Facebook will start to show advertisers reminders that they need consent for contact info ad targeting and force all users connected to an ad account to confirm these terms.

The new consent tool launch confirms TechCrunch’s scoop from March that Facebook would crack down Custom Audiences targeting without consent. Facebook has always technically required consent, but it hasn’t necesssarily done much to enforce those rules. That same approach to API rules produced the Cambridge Analytica debacle.

Custom Audiences is one of Facebook’s most valuable revenue generators because it allows businesses to hit up their former customers to buy more. A scandal surrounding the targeting mechanism could be seriously detrimental to the social network’s business in a way that the rest of its recent public image problems haven’t, judging by the recovery of Facebook’s share price.

Since 2012, Facebook has offered Custom Audiences as a way for businesses to upload privacy-safe hashed lists of customer contact info. Facebook matches that against its users’ info to show them the business’ ads, rather than companies having to pay to try to reach those people through demographic targeting. That way, a company that already sold you a car and got your email signup could targeting you a few years later with ads to trade in and buy a new vehicle. Businesses can also use Facebook’s lookalikes targeting to reach people with similar characteristics to their existing customers.

Now at least Facebook will show this “Original Data Source” field asking who collected the uploaded phone numbers or emails. Users can check out this info if they click the “Why Am I Seeing This Ads?” button in the drop-down. However, Facebook stops short of scanning the lists for suspicious info, such as blocks of contact info that match hacked or purchased data sets.

That means Facebook is trusting advertisers to tell the truth about consent for targeting…despite them having a massive financial incentive to bend of break those rules. Today’s update will give Facebook more plausible deniability in the event of a scandal, and it might deter misuse. But Facebook is stopping short of doing anything to actually prevent non-consensual ad targeting.


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Opendoor raises $325M to make buying and selling homes a near-instant process


Investors are placing another huge bet on a startup looking to reinvent a decades-old process into something that’s near instant, this time pouring $325 million into Opendoor — a company that wants to bring the complex operation of buying or selling a home down to something similarly as simple as hailing a Lyft.

The idea of Opendoor is one not so dissimilar from a consumer theory that’s blossomed into companies worth tens of billions of dollars — consumers hate complex processes and are willing to hand off those processes to technology companies if they can make it even a little simpler. Home-buying and selling can be one of the more intense ones, requiring a lot of moving pieces and coordinating multiple time tables and schedules. Opendoor’s theory is that it can create a sizable business by dropping that time and energy cost to zero and effectively create a new technology-powered business model in the process, just like Uber or Airbnb.

Opendoor says it hopes to expand to 50 markets by the end of 2020 with this additional financing. It is in ten markets right now, and also says it now purchases more than $2.5 billion in homes on an annual run rate. The company says it has raised a $325 million financing round co-led by General Atlantic, Access Technology Ventures, and Lennar Corporation. Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue Management, 10100 Fund, and Invitation Homes also participated, as well as existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, Lakestar, GGV Capital, NEA, and Khosla Ventures. Opendoor has in total raised $645 million in equity and $1.5 billion in debt.

“What I realized was that one there’s a lot of tailwinds with people wanting to transact with their mobile device,” CEO Eric Wu said. “We see this with Uber and Lyft and Amazon. I think the future of real estate will be on demand, that’s the centerpiece of Opendoor’s thesis. How do we make the transaction real-time and instant. I realized there were going to be tailwinds, and that real estate was in dire need of being able to be transformed.”

Opendoor has also sought to expand its efforts to make viewing those homes just as seamless. The company enables potential customers to check out a home by opening it with the app seven days a week. Wu said that most potential buyers go to the house each of the seven days up to the transaction, and then seven days after the transaction happens. Given that it’s such a significant step for any home owner, it makes sense that a lot of planning and consideration would go into the process. The next step is to create a sort of trade-up system, where Opendoor works to create a streamlined way to turn around an existing home for a new home.

Still, buying (or selling) a home is one of the single-largest transactions a consumer can do — especially if they are in a major metropolitan area where houses can quickly hit the $1 million-plus range. So it’s still a hurdle to convince consumers that they should press a few buttons to make a transaction in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wu said that the challenge there was to build enough trust with customers that they realize the process should be as seamless and powered by transparent data.

“It’s something we faced early on when we launched the service,” Wu said. “We were asking sellers to sell their home online to a tech company. A lot of the things we’ve done — like lowering the fees and being transparent about pricing — has helped us build trust. It’s one of the largest financial transactions anyone makes. We have to build a world-class pricing model, be transparent about how we got to the quote, make it a low-fee service, and this helps provide a certainty around the process.

To try to do all this, Opendoor says it’s built a robust data set that will help best model potential prices for homes and be more transparent about that information. Wu said Opendoor currently employs around 650 people and hopes to double that by the end of next year, and the company is investing a significant amount of capital in growing out its data science team. The challenge is to understand the dynamics of the housing market — and any potential chaos — in order to best assess how to buy and sell those homes. Opendoor acquires some risk by purchasing some homes and holding them for a period fo time, so ensuring that the company knows how the market performs will be one of its biggest challenges.

Opendoor is certainly not the only player in this area, as some competitors like Knock and OfferPad are starting to raise additional capital. Knock picked up $32 million in January last year with a similar bet: simplify the home-buying process and handle all of the details behind the scenes. If anything, it’s shown that there’s an appetite among the venture community (especially one where the numbers just keep getting bigger) for models that look to tap the same consumer demand of simplifying overly complex processes to just a few inputs on a smart app powered by data science.


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