Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

Last week TechCrunch reported that Reddit was raising $150 million from Chinese tech giant Tencent and up to $150 million more in a Series D that would value the company at $2.7 billion pre-money or $3 billion post-money. After no-commenting on our scoop, today Reddit confirmed it’s raised $300 million at $3 billion post-money, with $150 million from Tencent.

The deal makes for an odd pairing between one of the architects of China’s Great Firewall of censorship and one of America’s most lawless free-speech forums. Some Redditors are already protesting the funding by trying to post content that would rile Chinese’s internet watchdogs, like imagery from Tiananmen Square and Winnie The Pooh memes mocking Chinese President Xi Jinping’s appearance.

Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3 billion valuation

The round brings the Conde Nast-majority owned Reddit to $550 million in total funding. Beyond Tencent, the rest of the round came from previous investors potentially including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and Fidelity. Apparently frustrated that we had disrupted its PR plan, Reddit today handed confirmation of the round to CNBC which re-reported our scoop without citation.

Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman has had his own problems with attribution after the exec was caught editing users’ comments to mislead viewers into thinking they were insulting their Subreddit’s moderators. Huffman managed to get off with just an apology and vow not to do it again, though he seemed to laugh off and excuse the abuse of power by saying “I spent my formative years as a young troll on the Internet.”

Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

Reddit will have to compete for ad dollars with the Google-Facebook duopoly despite having less information about its users, who are often anonymous. Reddit sees 330 million users per month across its Subreddit forums for discussing everything from news and entertainment to niche types of pornography, conspiracy theories, and other highly brand-unsafe content. Meanwhile, users may be concerned that Reddit’s policy views could be tightened as it cosies up to Tencent.

Reddit has struggled with staff departures and user revolts over the years as it tries to balance freedom of expression with civility. The hope is the cash could help it pay for experienced leaders and more moderation staff to maintain that balance. But without proper oversight, the cash could simply scale up Reddit and its problems along with it.

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Google Docs gets an API for task automation

Google today announced the general availability of a new API for Google Docs that will allow developers to automate many of the tasks that users typically do manually in the company’s online office suite. The API has been in developer preview since last April’s Google Cloud Next 2018 and is now available to all developers.

As Google notes, the REST API was designed to help developers build workflow automation services for their users, build content management services and create documents in bulk. Using the API, developers can also set up processes that manipulate documents after the fact to update them and the API also features the ability to insert, delete, move, merge and format text, insert inline images and work with lists, among other things.

The canonical use case here is invoicing, where you need to regularly create similar documents with ever-changing order numbers and line items based on information from third-party systems (or maybe even just a Google Sheet). Google also notes that the API’s import/export abilities allow you to use Docs for internal content management systems.

Some of the companies that built solutions based on the new API during the preview period include Zapier, Netflix, Mailchimp and Final Draft. Zapier integrated the Docs API into its own workflow automation tool to help its users create offer letters based on a template, for example, while Netflix used it to build an internal tool that helps its engineers gather data and automate its documentation workflow.

 

 

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New figures highlight the iPhone’s rough quarter in China

When Apple issued revised guidance for its quarterly earnings last month, the company singled out China as a primary driver for its disappointing result. Sure enough, iPhone revenue declined 15 percent year over year, and now IDC’s got some more insight into the role the Chinese market may have played in that decline.

New figures out this week show right around a 20 percent dip in shipments in China y-o-y for the quarter. That’s a pretty dramatic drop for a market that’s been a key factor in Apple’s growth plans, going forward. That marks a drop from 12.9 to 11.5 percent of the market. Last month Tim Cook highlighted some of the reasons for the drop in the world’s largest smartphone market.

Among the reasons cited are international trade tensions and an overall slowing Chinese economy. Of course, Apple’s not alone in seeing a decline. Smartphone shipments are down almost across the board, owing to slower upgrade cycles. Most phones are already pretty good, so people are holding onto them for longer. It’s also worth noting that this year’s XS didn’t mark as dramatic an upgrade as its predecessor. 

Tellingly, however, a number of native smartphone makers are up in the country, including, notably, Huawei, which saw a 23.3 percent uptick for the quarter, suggesting that the ascendent company ate into Apple’s market share.

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Facebook urged to offer an API for political ad transparency research

Facebook has been called upon to provide good faith researchers with an API to enable them to study how political ads are spreading and being amplified on its platform.

A coalition of European academics, technologists and human and digital rights groups, led by Mozilla, has signed an open letter to the company demanding far greater transparency about how Facebook’s platform distributes and amplifies political ads ahead of elections to the European parliament which will take place in May.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for a reaction to the open letter.

The company had already announced it will launch some of its self-styled ‘election security’ measures in the EU before then — specifically an authorization and transparency system for political ads.

Last month its new global comms guy — former European politician and one time UK deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg — also announced that, from next month, it will have human-staffed operations centers up and running to monitor how localised political news gets distributed on its platform, with one of the centers located within the EU, in Dublin, Ireland.

But signatories to the letter argue the company’s heavily PR’ed political ad transparency measures don’t go far enough.

They also point out that some of the steps Facebook has taken have blocked independent efforts to monitor its political ad transparency claims.

Last month the Guardian reported on changes Facebook had made to its platform that restricted the ability of an external political transparency campaign group, called WhoTargetsMe, to monitor and track the flow of political ads on its platform.

The UK-based campaign group is one of more than 30 groups that have signed the open letter — calling for Facebook to stop what they couch as “harassment of good faith researchers who are building tools to provide greater transparency into the advertising on your platform”.

Other signatories include the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Open Data Institute and Reporters Without Borders.

“By restricting access to advertising transparency tools available to Facebook users, you are undermining transparency, eliminating the choice of your users to install tools that help them analyse political ads, and wielding control over good faith researchers who try to review data on the platform,” they write.

“Your alternative to these third party tools provides simple keyword search functionality and does not provide the level of data access necessary for meaningful transparency.”

The letter calls on Facebook to roll out “a functional, open Ad Archive API that enables advanced research and development of tools that analyse political ads served to Facebook users in the EU” — and do so by April 1, to enable external developers to have enough time to build transparency tools before the EU elections.

Signatories also urge the company to ensure that all political ads are “clearly distinguished from other content”, as well as being accompanied by “key targeting criteria such as sponsor identity and amount spent on the platform in all EU countries”.

Last year UK policymakers investigating the democratic impacts of online disinformation pressed Facebook on the issue of what the information it provides users about the targeting criteria for political ads. They also asked the company why it doesn’t offer users a complete opt-out from receiving political ads. Facebook’s CTO Mike Schroepfer was unable — or unwilling — to provide clear answers, instead choosing to deflect questions by reiterating the tidbits of data that Facebook has decided it will provide.

Close to a year later and Facebook users in the majority of European markets are still waiting for even a basic layer of political transparency, as the company has been allowed to continue self regulating at its own pace and — crucially — by getting to define what ‘transparency’ means (and therefore how much of the stuff users get).

Facebook launched some of these self-styled political ad transparency measures in the UK last fall — adding ‘paid for by’ disclaimers, and saying ads would be retained in an archive for seven years. (Though its verification checks had to be revised after they were quickly shown to be trivially easy to circumvent.)

Earlier in the year it also briefly suspended accepting ads paid for by foreign entities during a referendum on abortion in Ireland.

However other European elections — such as regional elections — have taken place without Facebook users getting access to any information about the political ads they’re seeing or who’s paying for them.

The EU’s executive body has its eye on the issue. Late last month the European Commission published the first batch of monthly ‘progress reports’ from platforms and ad companies that signed up to a voluntary code of conduct on political disinformation that was announced last December — saying all signatories need to do a lot more and fast.

On Facebook specifically, the Commission said it needs to provide “greater clarity” on how it will deploy consumer empowerment tools, and also boost its cooperation with fact-checkers and the research community across the whole EU — with commissioner Julian King singling the company out for failing to provide independent researchers with access to its data.

Today’s open letter from academics and researchers backs up the Commission’s assessment of feeble first efforts from Facebook and offers further fuel to feed its next monthly assessment.

The Commission has continued to warn it could legislate on the issue if platforms fail to step up their efforts to tackle political disinformation voluntarily.

Pressuring platforms to self-regulate has its own critics too, of course — who point out that it does nothing to tackle the core underlying problem of platforms having too much power in the first place…

The problem isn’t Zuckerberg makes poor decisions on behalf of the public. It’s that he’s making them in the first place.

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 11, 2019

The facts about Facebook

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Samsung promises a better look at its folding phone next week

Samsung’s not telling us anything we don’t already know with its latest teaser. But before I hop on yet another flight to San Francisco, it’s good to know I’m getting a little more bang for my (well, Verizon’s) buck.

In addition to the Galaxy S10, Samsung will also be offering a much better glimpse of its long-promised foldable phone at its SF event on February 20. A new animated teaser promises that “The Future Unfolds” at the event that’s currently a little over a week away.

If you’ll recall, the company offered a very fleeting glimpse of the product at its developers conference, but the product was shrouded in mystery — not to mention pretty unwieldy prototype hardware.

The most likely scenario for next week’s event is a more detailed glimpse at the future product, including a name— and perhaps even something approaching a release date. Most likely, however, the company and event will be largely focused on the details around its next flagship.

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Bumble launches Spotlight, its own version of Tinder’s Boost

Bumble, currently Tinder’s biggest rival in the dating app market, today launched its own version of Tinder’s “Boost” feature. On Bumble, it’s being called “Spotlight” and allows users to pay to bump their profile up to the front of the queue, in order to be seen by more people than they would otherwise.

Very much like Tinder Boost, the idea here is that getting to the front of the line will allow you to pick up matches more quickly, as you don’t have to wait until users swipe through other profiles before they see yours. Plus, depending on how far in the back of the line you are typically, Spotlight could help you be seen by those who would have never made it to your profile page at all.

Spotlight – or Boost, for that matter – isn’t something every dating app user needs.

Dating apps today organize their queues with profiles based on a number of factors – including things like profile popularity, whether you swipe right on everyone or are more selective, whether your photos are higher quality or blurry, and many other signals. If you tend to get matches easily on the apps, you may not need Spotlight. But if you suspect your profile is further down the line, or just want to make sure your profile is getting seen, the feature could help.

To use Spotlight, Bumble users must pay 2 Coins (bought through a separate in-app purchase). 1 coin is $0.99 in the U.S., or £1.99 in the U.K. Spotlight will then show your profile to more users for the next 30 minutes. Your profile is not flagged or labeled in any way, so no one knows you used Spotlight to be promoted. However, the user who purchased Spotlight will know it’s active as they’ll see stars appear across the top part of the Bumble app while it’s enabled.

Spotlight represents another way that Bumble continues to challenges Tinder head-on by rolling out similar features, after already co-opting the swipe-to-like and the super-like, for example.

The move also comes just following another successful quarter by Match Group, led by the earnings from its flagship app Tinder.

Combined with its other dating app properties, Match pulled in $457 million in revenue, up 21 percent year-over-year, and topping analyst estimates. Tinder reported its paying subscriber base grew to 4.3 million as of year-end, out of a total user base that tops 50 million. (The company doesn’t disclose the number of users it has.)

Bumble, meanwhile, today says it has now reached 50 million worldwide users, with 84,000 new users being added daily.

Spotlight is one of several in-app purchases offered by Bumble, alongside the recently launched option to access more profile filters, for example, as well as free features, like Snooze, which let you take a digital detox from online dating.

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Bumble launches Spotlight, its own version of Tinder’s Boost

Bumble, currently Tinder’s biggest rival in the dating app market, today launched its own version of Tinder’s “Boost” feature. On Bumble, it’s being called “Spotlight” and allows users to pay to bump their profile up to the front of the queue, in order to be seen by more people than they would otherwise.

Very much like Tinder Boost, the idea here is that getting to the front of the line will allow you to pick up matches more quickly, as you don’t have to wait until users swipe through other profiles before they see yours. Plus, depending on how far in the back of the line you are typically, Spotlight could help you be seen by those who would have never made it to your profile page at all.

Spotlight – or Boost, for that matter – isn’t something every dating app user needs.

Dating apps today organize their queues with profiles based on a number of factors – including things like profile popularity, whether you swipe right on everyone or are more selective, whether your photos are higher quality or blurry, and many other signals. If you tend to get matches easily on the apps, you may not need Spotlight. But if you suspect your profile is further down the line, or just want to make sure your profile is getting seen, the feature could help.

To use Spotlight, Bumble users must pay 2 Coins (bought through a separate in-app purchase). Spotlight will then show your profile to more users for the next 30 minutes. Your profile is not flagged or labeled in any way, so no one knows you used Spotlight to be promoted. However, the user who purchased Spotlight will know it’s active as they’ll see stars appear across the top part of the Bumble app while it’s enabled.

Spotlight represents another way that Bumble continues to challenges Tinder head-on by rolling out similar features, after already co-opting the swipe-to-like and the super-like, for example.

The move also comes just following another successful quarter by Match Group, led by the earnings from its flagship app Tinder.

Combined with its other dating app properties, Match pulled in $457 million in revenue, up 21 percent year-over-year, and topping analyst estimates. Tinder reported its paying subscriber base grew to 4.3 million as of year-end, out of a total user base that tops 50 million. (The company doesn’t disclose the number of users it has.)

Bumble, meanwhile, today says it has now reached 50 million worldwide users, with 84,000 new users being added daily.

Spotlight is one of several in-app purchases offered by Bumble, alongside the recently launched option to access more profile filters, for example, as well as free features, like Snooze, which let you take a digital detox from online dating.

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Dating apps face questions over age checks after report exposes child abuse

The UK government has said it could legislate to require age verification checks on users of dating apps, following an investigation into underage use of dating apps published by the Sunday Times yesterday.

The newspaper found more than 30 cases of child rape have been investigated by police related to use of dating apps including Grindr and Tinder since 2015. It reports that one 13-year-old boy with a profile on the Grindr app was raped or abused by at least 21 men. 

The Sunday Times also found 60 further instances of child sex offences related to the use of online dating services — including grooming, kidnapping and violent assault, according to the BBC, which covered the report.

The youngest victim is reported to have been just eight years old. The newspaper obtaining the data via freedom of information requests to UK police forces.

Responding to the Sunday Times’ investigation, a Tinder spokesperson told the BBC it uses automated and manual tools, and spends “millions of dollars annually”, to prevent and remove underage users and other inappropriate behaviour, saying it does not want minors on the platform.

Grindr also reacting to the report, providing the Times with a statement saying: “Any account of sexual abuse or other illegal behaviour is troubling to us as well as a clear violation of our terms of service. Our team is constantly working to improve our digital and human screening tools to prevent and remove improper underage use of our app.”

We’ve also reached out to the companies with additional questions.

The UK’s secretary of state for digital, media, culture and sport (DCMS), Jeremy Wright, dubbed the newspaper’s investigation “truly shocking”, describing it as further evidence that “online tech firms must do more to protect children”.

He also suggested the government could expand forthcoming age verification checks for accessing pornography to include dating apps — saying he would write to the dating app companies to ask “what measures they have in place to keep children safe from harm, including verifying their age”.

“If I’m not satisfied with their response, I reserve the right to take further action,” he added.

Age verification checks for viewing online porn are due to come into force in the UK in April, as part of the Digital Economy Act.

Those age checks, which are clearly not without controversy given the huge privacy considerations of creating a database of adult identities linked to porn viewing habits, have also been driven by concern about children’s exposure to graphic content online.

Last year the UK government committed to legislating on social media safety too, although it has yet to set out the detail of its policy plans. But a white paper is due imminently.

A parliamentary committee which reported last week urged the government to put a legal ‘duty of care’ on platforms to protect minors.

It also called for more robust systems for age verification. So it remains at least a possibility that some types of social media content could be age-gated in the country in future.

Last month the BBC reported on the death of a 14-year-old schoolgirl who killed herself in 2017 after being exposed to self-harm imagery on the platform.

Following the report, Instagram’s boss met with Wright and the UK’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, to discuss concerns about the impact of suicide-related content circulating on the platform.

After the meeting Instagram announced it would ban graphic images of self-harm last week.

Earlier the same week the company responded to the public outcry over the story by saying it would no longer allow suicide related content to be promoted via its recommendation algorithms or surfaced via hashtags.

Also last week, the government’s chief medical advisors called for a code of conduct for social media platforms to protect vulnerable users.

The medical experts also called for greater transparency from platform giants to support public interest-based research into the potential mental health impacts of their platforms.

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The 8 Best Podcasts About Audio and Sound Design

In many ways, sound design can be even more influential and impactful than visual design.

Podcasts are an excellent way to learn about sound. They’re free, delivered straight to your ears, and produced with the listening experience in mind. Whether you’re an aspiring producer, future composer, or audiophile, there’s no better way to immerse yourself in the world of sound than to listen and learn.

We’ve compiled a list of podcasts that will help you learn about audio and sound design.

1. Twenty Thousand Hertz

Twenty Thousand Hertz is developed by Defacto Sound, an award-winning sound design studio. In each episode, the show takes a recognizable or fascinating sound and explores the context surrounding it. These sounds can range from audio notifications on your computer to the audio logos and jingles tied to famous brands. Often, they are sounds that you will have heard before but have never given much thought.

Since it’s produced by a professional sound design company, it’s no surprise that the show’s production is among the very best that podcasts have to offer. There’s sure to be something in every episode that audiophiles and audio novices alike can learn.

Episodes to Start With: #40 – ASMR; #37 – Seizure Sonification; #16 – The Wilhelm Scream

2. Song Exploder

If you’ve ever wondered about how a song is made from start to finish, then you should listen to Song Exploder. Every week, a featured musician picks one of their tracks and dives into the writing, recording, and production process behind it. Also, it’s a show that can help you discover new music.

It doesn’t matter what kind of music you listen to, as the show runs the gamut of genres. There are famous pop stars, film composers, heavy metal bands, independent artists, and more. If you simply scroll through the show’s archives, there’s a good chance you will find a track that you already know and love. At the end of an episode, you will likely appreciate the song even more.

Episodes to Start With: Fleetwood Mac – Go Your Own Way; Phoenix – Ti Amo; Johann Johannsson – Arrival

3. Sound Matters by Bang & Olufsen

Sound Matters is produced by one of the giants of the audio electronics world, Bang and Olufsen. However, the show is less about audio technology and more about appreciating the sound all around us.

Every episode is a highly immersive experience and tackles a subject that’s interesting and out of the box, like ambient animal noises or the relationship between memory and sound. In the podcast’s latest season, each episode focuses on the sounds of a particular city, such as New Delhi, Los Angeles, or Tokyo.

The show is hosted by Tim Hinman, a sound designer with a voice that is soothing yet consistently engaging.

Episodes to Start With: #23 – Tick Tock Tokyo; #16 – The Bass, The Colour, The Mystery of Synesthesia; #10 – Sounds from Outer Space

4. Tonebenders

Tonebenders, produced and hosted by sound designers Rene Coronado and Timothy Muirhead, frequently features guests with award-winning bodies of work. The show has in-depth discussions between sound designers in film and television as they discuss their work, their collaborations, and their careers within the industry.

The hosts and guests often get into the nitty-gritty of the production process. Most episodes run between 40 minutes and an hour. If you want to be a sound designer one day, then Tonebenders is essential listening.

Episodes to Start With: #90 – Ai-Ling Lee & Mildred Iatrou Morgan on First Man; #74 – A Quiet Place Erik Aadahl & Ethan Van der Ryn; #48 – ADR Roundtable

5. UBK Happy Funtime Hour

The UBK Happy Funtime Hour is highly recommended for people with a strong interest in sound mixing and audio engineering. Every episode is a look into the lives and careers of audio engineers, as seen through the lenses of hosts Gregory Scott and Nathan Daniel.

Even when the show gets into some deeply technical stuff (which is most of the time) the hosts manage to keep it light and conversational thanks to their great rhetoric and passion for the work.

If you want to learn about compression, mastering, or plugins, there’s no better podcast out there.

Episodes to Start With: The Latest Episode

6. Soundworks Collection

The Soundworks Collection Podcast is a spin-off of a popular video series of the same name. Both profile the work of a variety of music and audio professionals in cinema and video games. Each episode features interviews with the sound crews, composers, and songwriters that create the soundscapes and score for a particular piece of work.

The guests discuss their creative process and how their work ties into the other aspects of the film or game. Many of the interviewees will be familiar names to those that watch the Oscars, as many of them go on to win awards.

Episodes to Start With: The Sound of Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse; The Sound of Baby Driver; The Sound of La La Land

7. Soundbytes

Sound design for video games has come a long way since the days of 8-bit audio on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Games now feature immersive and detailed soundscapes.

The Soundbytes Podcast, produced by sound designers Derek Brown and Barney Oram, explores the world of gaming and audio in an informative and conversational manner. Together with some guests from the industry, they explore the recording and design process, discuss equipment and resources, and talk about video games that have great audio.

Episodes to Start With: #22 – Some Sound Favourites; #20 – Sanken and Gators; #10 – Summer Shindig

8. Hanging Out With Audiophiles

Jamie Lidell is best known as a soul and electronica musician. It’s something that he’s been doing for several decades and across six feature-length albums. However, a couple of years ago, he launched a side-project entitled Hanging Out With Audiophiles, a podcast about the world of music production.

Lidell interviews some of the most prolific producers in all of music as they talk about their beginnings, artists that they’ve worked with, and their experiences in the industry. If you have any interest in becoming a music producer, you’re going to love the stories featured here.

Episodes to Start With: #32 – Ann Mincieli; #21 – Mark Ronson; #10 – Paul Epworth

The Wonderful World of Audio

The world of podcasts is vast, and the ones listed above are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many great audio-centric podcasts waiting to be discovered. If you still don’t have a podcast app installed on your device, here are some great podcast apps for Android and some great podcast apps for iOS.

And if you’ve heard enough podcasts to get you started, here is the best free music production software for beginners.

Read the full article: The 8 Best Podcasts About Audio and Sound Design

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The 9 Best Linux App Launchers to Help You Get Stuff Done Faster

Some people are content to mouse over endless menus when it comes time to launch an app, but chances are you’re using Linux because you prefer to use your computer in a more efficient manager. That’s when an app launcher, which lets you do anything from launch apps to search your files with just a few taps on the keyboard, comes in handy.

Fortunately, you’ve got a lot of choices on Linux, but choosing between them can be difficult. That’s why we rounded up some of the best Linux app launchers and what makes them great.

1. Cerebro

If you’ve used macOS in recent years, chances are Cerebro will look familiar. Why? Because the app aims to offer the same features as Spotlight, which is built into macOS.

The default keyboard shortcut to launch the app is Ctrl + Space. Once the small window pops up, you’ll be able to launch applications, search for files, and more. Typing the name of a location followed by “map” will show a map of that location right in the window.

Start typing a simple bit of math like “2+2” and the results will appear right away. Plugins integrate with other services as well. These plugins appear right in the Cerebro interface, so there’s no need to search for them on the web as you would with some other launchers.

Cerebro is an Electron app so it runs on macOS and Windows in addition to Linux. Development appears to have slowed down, but Cerebro offers a full experience.

Download: Cerebro (Free)

2. Synapse

If you’ve ever looked into Linux app launchers before, chances are you’ve stumbled across Synapse, as it’s been around for years. This app uses the Gnome Zeitgeist engine, making its search results blazing fast. Because of this, it also means this might not be your top pick if you aren’t a Gnome user.

In addition to launching apps and searching files, Synapse also has quick shortcuts for logging out of your user account and shutting down or restarting your computer. You can also use plugins to play MP3 files in the default media player, run terminal commands, and lock your screen.

Development has slowed on Synapse, with the bulk of recent releases focusing on fixing bugs rather than new features. The last release was April 2018, but don’t let that stop you from trying Synapse, especially if you use Ubuntu.

Download: Synapse (Free)

3. Albert

If you’re a fan of one of the most popular app launchers on macOS, Alfred, you might find the name Albert a little familiar. That’s likely very much on purpose, as Alfred users will feel at home using Albert.

Most launchers (with another on this list being a notable exception) are keyboard focused, but Albert takes this further. A list of default actions shows up as the result of what you type, but this isn’t all that’s available. Holding down the Alt key shows a list containing all the alternative actions.

It’s worth browsing the documentation on the Albert website to see all you can do with the keyboard.

Albert offers prebuilt packages for many of the various Linux distributions, so this one is easy to install. The app is written in Qt but should work well with plenty of different desktop environments.

Download: Albert (Free)

4. Launchy

One of the older launchers on this list, Launchy may be familiar to Windows users. In fact, the app seems to focus on Windows most but is also available on Linux and macOS. All the plugins on the Launchy website are Windows-only, but if you install on Ubuntu, you’ll see a Launchy-plugins package is available.

All the default functionality you’d expect is here: you can find and launch apps as well as search and open files. Even if you never touch the plugins, that’s still handy. If you’re looking for simplicity, not excitement, this is a good choice. It’s also handy if you just want to use a launcher that you’re already familiar with from Windows.

Download: Launchy (Free)

5. Lighthouse

Unlike a lot of the other entries on this list, Lighthouse’s developer doesn’t describe it as a launcher. Instead, it is described as “A simple flexible popup dialog to run on X.”

If you want some of the benefits of a launcher without adding any bulk to your system, this might be a nice choice. Lighthouse is extremely lightweight and isn’t going to waste any system resources to run.

On the downside, you’ll have to configure it yourself. It doesn’t even have a keyboard shortcut by default. Instead, it’s up to you to figure out how you want to launch it. It’s somewhat telling that the only prebuilt package available is the lighthouse-git package for Arch Linux.

Download: Lighthouse (Free)

6. Gnome Do

An older launcher but beloved by many to this day, Gnome Do was one of the earlier launchers available for Linux. Despite its age, Gnome Do is still available and offers some features you won’t find in other launchers.

For example, if you type the name of an app that’s already running, Gnome Do will recognize this and offer up window management options. There are also plenty of plugins available, and they’re built-in. All you need to do is enable the ones you want to use.

As the “Gnome” in the name implies, the launcher is meant for GNOME users, but should also work for MATE and other GNOME-derived desktops.

Download: Gnome Do (Free)

7. Kupfer

While Cerebro takes inspiration from Spotlight and Albert is inspired by Alfred, Kupfer is inspired by another macOS launcher: Quicksilver. If you long for the days of “the comma trick,” a Quicksilver feature that allowed you to do an operation on multiple files located anywhere on your computer, you’ll love Kupfer.

That very feature is included in Kupfer among a host of others. Like many other launchers, Kupfer uses a plugin system. Here it’s used extensively, as even launching applications is handled by a plugin, which is included. Other plugins include support for the Thunar file browser and a Notes plugin that integrates with Gnote or Tomboy.

Kupfer hasn’t been updated in two years, but if you’re a current or former Quicksilver user, it’s absolutely worth a look.

Download: Kupfer (Free)

8. Apwal

Apwal is unlike every single other launcher on this list. Instead of relying on keyboard shortcuts, Apwal relies entirely on your mouse. Specifically, it binds to your right mouse button.

Click the right mouse button and various icons will pop up around it, allowing you to launch commonly used apps with two quick clicks. The included Apwal Editor lets you configure what icons are shown, and what exactly happens when you click on them.

If you prefer, you can set Apwal to use a keyboard shortcut like Alt + Space instead of the right mouse button, making it act more like the other launchers on this list. Still, it’s a very different approach that may appeal to you if you’re a more visually oriented person.

Download: Apwal (Free)

9. Ulauncher

One of the hottest launchers around these days, Ulauncher doesn’t do much different than the other launchers on this list. That said, what it does, it does very well.

If you’re no stranger to typos, Ulauncher may well be your new best friend, as it does a good job figuring out what you meant to type. Even better, the more you use it, the more it learns what you want to open when you type just a few letters. Eventually, it fits like a glove.

Ulauncher has a large library of extensions available including two-factor authentication support, Trello integration, docker integration, and even the ability to search through projects in Visual Studio Code. Packages are available for Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, and openSUSE, so it’s easy to install. Development is still very active, so if you want to live on the cutting edge, this might be the best option.

Download: Ulauncher (Free)

Which Linux App Launcher Is Right for You?

While the above launchers all share a few common features, they’re far from copies of each other. From the very keyboard-centric Albert to the mouse-focused Apwal, these vary quite a bit, so you might want to experiment with a few before you decide to settle. Eventually, you’re bound to find the right one for you.

Looking to be even more productive on Linux? We’ve put together a collection of to-do apps, timers, and extensions for Linux to help you do more in less time.

Read the full article: The 9 Best Linux App Launchers to Help You Get Stuff Done Faster

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Sean Parker’s govtech Brigade breaks up, Pinterest acqhires engineers

Facebook co-founder Sean Parker bankrolled Brigade to get out the vote and stimulate civic debate, but after five years and little progress the startup is splitting up, multiple sources confirm to TechCrunch. We’ve learned that Pinterest has acqhired roughly 20 members of the Brigade engineering team. The rest of Brigade is looking for a potential buyer or partner in the political space to take on the rest of the team plus its tech and product. Brigade CEO Matt Mahan confirmed the fate of the startup to TechCrunch.

While Brigade only formally raised $9.3 million in one round back in 2014, the company had quietly expanded that Series A round with more funding. A former employee said it had burned tens of millions of additional dollars over the years. Brigade had also acquired Causes, Sean Parker’s previous community action and charity organization tool.

After Brigade launched as an app for debating positions on heated political issues but failed to gain traction, it pivoted into what Causes had tried to be — a place for showing support for social movements. More recently, it’s focused on a Rep Tracker for following the stances and votes of elected officials. Yet the 2016 campaign and 2018 midterms seem to fly over Brigade’s head. It never managed to become a hub of activism, significantly impact voter turnout, or really even be part of the conversation.

After several election cycles, I hear the Brigade team felt like there had to be better ways to influence democracy or at least create a sustainable business. One former employee quipped that Brigade could have made a greater impact by just funneling its funding into voter turnout billboards instead of expensive San Francisco office space and talent.

The company’s mission to spark civic engagement was inadvertently accomplished by Donald Trump’s election polarizing the country and making many on both sides suddenly get involved. It did succeed in predicting Trump’s victory, after its polls of users found many democrats planned to vote against their party. But while Facebook and Twitter weren’t necessarily the most organized or rational places for discourse, it started to seem unnecessary to try to build a new hub for it from scratch.

Brigade accepted that its best bet was to refocus on govtech infrastructure like its voter identification and elected official accountability tools, rather than a being a consumer destination. Its expensive, high-class engineering team was too big to fit into a potential political technology acquirer or partner. Many of those staffers had joined to build consumer-facing products, not govtech scaffolding.

Mahan, Brigade’s co-founder and CEO as well as the former Causes CEO, confirms the breakup and Pinterest deal, telling us “We ended up organizing the acqhire with Pinterest first because we wanted to make sure we took care of as many people on the team as possible. We were incredibly happy to find that through the process, 19 members of our engineering team earned offers and ended up going over to Pinterest. That’s about two-thirds of our engineering team. They were really excited about staying in consumer product and saw career opportunities at Pinterest.” We’re still waiting on a comment from Pinterest.

Brigade had interest from multiple potential acqhirers and allowed the engineering team’s leadership to decide to go with Pinterest. Several of Brigade’s engineers and its former VP of Engineering Trish Gray already list on LinkedIn that they’ve moved to Pinterest in the past few months. “We had a bunch of employees that took a risk on a very ambitious plan to improve our democracy and we didn’t want to leave them out to dry” Mahan stresses. “We spent more time and more money and more effort in taking care of employees over the last few months than most companies do and I think that’s a testament to Sean and his values.”

Mahan is currently in talks with several potential hosts for the next phase of Brigade, and hopes to have a transition plan in place in the next month. “We’ve in parallel been exploring where we take the technology and the user base next. We want to be sure that it lives on and can further the mission the we set out to achieve even if it doesn’t look like the way it does today.” Though the company’s output is tough to measure, Mahan tells me that “Brigade built a lot of foundational technology such as high quality voter matching algorithms and an entire model for districting people to their elected representatives. My hope for our legacy is that we were able to solve some of these problems that other people can build on.” Given Parker’s previous work with Marijuana legalization campaign Prop 64 in California and his new Opportunity Zones tax break effort, Brigade’s end won’t be Parker’s exit from politics.

Brigade’s breakup could still cast an ominous shadow over the govtech ecosystem, though. Alongside recent layoffs at grassroots campaign text message tool Hustle, it’s proven difficult for some startups in politics to become sustainable businesses. Exceptions like Palantir succeed by arming governments with data science that can be weaponized against citizens. Yet with the 2020 elections around the corner, fake news and election propaganda still a threat, and technology being applied for new nefarious political purposes, society could benefit from more tools built to amplify social justice and a fair democratic process.

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