Alphabet’s Wing gets FAA permission to start delivering by drone

Wing Aviation, the drone-based delivery startup born out of Google’s X labs, has received the first FAA certification in the country for commercial carriage of goods. It might not be long before you’re getting your burritos sent par avion.

The company has been performing tests for years, making thousands of flights and supervised deliveries to show that its drones are safe and effective. Many of those flights were in Australia, where in suburban Canberra the company recently began its first commercial operations. Finland and other countries are also in the works..

Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery business, to begin a pilot in Finland in Spring 2019

Wing’s first operations, starting later this year, will be in Blackburg and Christiansburg, VA; obviously an operation like this requires close coordination with municipal authorities as well as federal ones. You can’t just get a permission slip from the FAA and start flying over everyone’s houses.

“Wing plans to reach out to the local community before it begins food delivery, to gather feedback to inform its future operations,” the FAA writes in a press release. Here’s hoping that means you can choose whether or not these loud little aircraft will be able to pass through your airspace.

Although the obvious application is getting a meal delivered quick even when traffic is bad, there are plenty of other applications. One imagines quick delivery of medications ahead of EMTs, or blood being transferred quickly between medical centers.

I’ve asked Wing for more details on its plans to roll this out elsewhere in the U.S., and will update this story if I hear back.

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Alphabet’s Wing gets FAA permission to start delivering by drone

Wing Aviation, the drone-based delivery startup born out of Google’s X labs, has received the first FAA certification in the country for commercial carriage of goods. It might not be long before you’re getting your burritos sent par avion.

The company has been performing tests for years, making thousands of flights and supervised deliveries to show that its drones are safe and effective. Many of those flights were in Australia, where in suburban Canberra the company recently began its first commercial operations. Finland and other countries are also in the works..

Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery business, to begin a pilot in Finland in Spring 2019

Wing’s first operations, starting later this year, will be in Blackburg and Christiansburg, VA; obviously an operation like this requires close coordination with municipal authorities as well as federal ones. You can’t just get a permission slip from the FAA and start flying over everyone’s houses.

“Wing plans to reach out to the local community before it begins food delivery, to gather feedback to inform its future operations,” the FAA writes in a press release. Here’s hoping that means you can choose whether or not these loud little aircraft will be able to pass through your airspace.

Although the obvious application is getting a meal delivered quick even when traffic is bad, there are plenty of other applications. One imagines quick delivery of medications ahead of EMTs, or blood being transferred quickly between medical centers.

I’ve asked Wing for more details on its plans to roll this out elsewhere in the U.S., and will update this story if I hear back.

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Tim Cook wants you to put down your iPhone

Tim Cook thinks people should get off their iPhones and decrease their engagement with apps. The Apple CEO, speaking at the TIME 100 Summit today, was discussing the addictive nature of our mobile devices and Apple’s role in the matter when he made these comments. He said the company hadn’t intended for people to be constantly using their iPhones, and noted he himself has silenced his push notifications in recent months.

“Apple never wanted to maximize user time. We’ve never been about that,” Cook explained.

It’s certainly an interesting claim, given that Apple designed a platform that allowed app developers to constantly ping their users with the most inane notifications — from getting a new follower on a social app to a sale in a shopping app to a new level added to a game and so much more.

The very idea behind the notification platform, opt-in as it may be, is that developers should actively — and in real-time — try to capture users’ attention and redirect them back to their apps.

This is not how such an alert mechanism had to be designed.

An app notification platform could have instead been crafted to allow app developers to notify users in batches, at designed intervals within users’ control. For example, users could have specified that every day at noon they’d like to check in on the latest from their apps.

Or, in building out the iOS App Store, Apple could have implemented a “news feed” of sorts — somewhere users could opt to check in on all the latest news from their installed apps in a dedicated channel.

Or perhaps Apple could have structured a notification platform that would have allowed users to pick between different classes of notifications. Urgent messages — like alerts about a security breach — could have been a top-level tier; while general information could have been sent as a different type of notification. Users could have selected which types of alerts they wanted, depending on how important the app was to them.

These are just a few of many possible iterations. A company like Apple could have easily come up with even more ideas.

But the fact of the matter is that Apple’s notification platform was built with the idea of increasing engagement in mind. It’s disingenuous to say it was not.

At the very least, Apple could admit that it was a different era back then, and didn’t realize the potential damage to our collective psyche that a continually buzzing iPhone would cause. It could point out how it’s now working to fix this problem by putting users back in control, and how it plans to do more in the future.

Instead, it created a situation where users had to turn to the only defense left to them: switching off push notifications entirely. Today, when users install new apps they often say “No” to push notifications. And with Apple’s new tools to control notifications, users are now actively triaging which apps can get in touch.

In fact, that’s what Tim Cook says he did, too.

“If you guys aren’t doing this — if you have an iPhone and you’re not doing it, I would encourage you to really do this —  monitor these [push notifications],” the CEO suggested to the audience.

“What it what has done for me personally is I’ve gone in and gutted the number of notifications,” Cook said. “Because I asked myself: do I really need to be getting thousands of notifications a day? It’s not something that is adding value to my life, or is making me a better person. And so I went in and chopped that.”

Yep. Even Apple’s CEO is done with all the spammy and noisy iPhone apps.

The comment, of course, was supposed to be a veiled reference to the addictive nature of some apps — social media apps in particular, and especially Facebook. Today, Apple throws barbs at Facebook any time it can, now that the company has fallen out of public favor due to its ongoing data privacy violations and constant scandals.

But a more truthful telling of the iPhone’s past would recall that Facebook’s app — and all its many notifications — was originally a big selling point for Apple’s mobile device.

When the App Store first launched in 2008, Facebook proudly sat in the top row in a featured position. It was heavily promoted to users because it was a prime example of the iPhone’s utility: here was this popular social network you could now get to right from your phone. Amazing! 

The fact that Facebook — and every other app — later leveraged the iOS push notification platform to better its own business without regard to how that would impact users, isn’t entirely app developers’ collective fault. The notification platform itself had left the door wide open for that sort of psychological abuse, simply due to its lack of user-configured, user-friendly controls.

 

A decade after the App Store launched, Apple finally started to dial back on the free-for-all on user attention.

It announced its suite of digital wellness tools at WWDC 2018, which included Screen Time (a dashboard for tracking and limiting usage); increased parental controls; and finally a way to silence the barrage of notifications, without having to dig around in iOS Settings.

Now Tim Cook wants to have us believe that Apple had never wanted to cause any of this addiction and distraction.

But isn’t it telling that the exec has had to silence his own iPhone using these new tools? Isn’t that something of an admission of culpability here?

“Every time you pick up your phone, it means you’re taking your eyes off whoever you’re dealing with are talking with, right?,” Cook continued. “And if you’re if you’re looking at your phone more than you’re looking at somebody else’s eyes, you’re doing the wrong thing,” he said.  “We want to educate people on what they’re doing. This thing will improve through time, just like everything else that we do. We’ll innovate there as we do in other areas.”

“But basically, we don’t want people using their phones all the time. This has never been an objective for us,” said Cook.

Except, of course, for those 10 years when it was.

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Facebook has quietly removed three bogus far right networks in Spain ahead of Sunday’s elections

Facebook has quietly removed three far right networks that were engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior intended to spread politically divisive content in Spain ahead of a general election in the country which takes place on Sunday.

The networks had a total reach of almost 1.7M followers and had generated close to 7.4M interactions in the past three months alone, according to analysis by the independent group that identified the bogus activity on Facebook’s platform.

The fake far right activity was apparently not picked up by Facebook.

Instead activist not-for-profit Avaaz unearthed the inauthentic content, and presented its findings to the social networking giant earlier this month, on April 12. In a press release issued today the campaigning organization said Facebook has now removed the fakes — apparently vindicating its findings.

“Facebook did a great job in acting fast, but these networks are likely just the tip of the disinformation iceberg — and if Facebook doesn’t scale up, such operations could sink democracy across the continent,” said Christoph Schott, campaign director at Avaaz, in a statement.

“This is how hate goes viral. A bunch of extremists use fake and duplicate accounts to create entire networks to fake public support for their divisive agenda. It’s how voters were misled in the U.S., and it happened again in Spain,” he added.

We reached out to Facebook for comment but at the time of writing the company had not responded to the request or to several questions we also put to it.

Avaaz said the networks it found comprised around thirty pages and groups spreading far right propaganda — including anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-feminist and anti-Islam content.

Examples of the inauthentic content can be viewed in Avaaz’s executive summary of the report. They include fake data about foreigners committing the majority of rapes in Spain; fake news about Catalonia’s pro independence leader; and various posts targeting leftwing political party Podemos — including an image superimposing the head of its leader onto the body of Hitler performing a nazi salute.

One of the networks — which Avaaz calls Unidad ​Nacional Española (after the most popular page in the network) — was apparently created and co-ordinated by an individual called ​Javier Ramón Capdevila Grau, who had multiple personal Facebook accounts (also) in contravention of Facebook’s community standards. 

This network, which had a reach of more than 1.2M followers, comprised at least 10 pages that Avaaz identified as working in a coordinated fashion to spread “politically divisive content”.

Its report details how word-for-word identical posts were published across multiple Facebook pages and groups in the network just minutes apart, with nothing to indicate they weren’t original postings on each page. 

Here’s an example post it found copy-pasted across the bogus network:

Translated the posted text reads: ‘In Spain, if a criminal enters your house without your permission the only thing you can do is hide, since if you touch a hair on his head or prevent him from being able to rob you you’ll spend more time in prison than him.’

Avaaz found another smaller network targeting leftwing views, called Todos Contra Podemos, which included seven pages and groups with around 114,000 followers — also apparently run by a single individual (in this case using the name Antonio Leal Felix Aguilar) who also operated multiple Facebook profiles. 

A third network, Lucha por España​, comprised 12 pages and groups with around 378,000 followers.

Avaaz said it was unable to identify the individual/s behind that network. 

While Facebook has not publicized the removals of these particular political disinformation networks, despite its now steady habit of issuing PR when it finds and removes ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior‘ on its platform (though of course there’s no way to be sure it’s disclosing everything it finds), test searches for the main pages identified by Avaaz returned either no results or what appear to be other unrelated Facebook pages using the same name.

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election was (infamously) targeted by divisive Kremlin propaganda seeded and amplified via social media, Facebook has launched what it markets as “election security” initiatives in a handful of countries around the world — such as searchable ad archives and political ad authentication and/or disclosure requirements.

However these efforts continue to face criticism for being patchy, piecemeal and, even in countries where they have been applied to its platform, weak and trivially easy to workaround.

Its political ads transparency measures do not always apply to issue-based ads (and/or content), for instance, which punches a democracy-denting hole in the self-styled ‘guardrails’ by allowing divisive propaganda to continue to flow.

In Spain Facebook has not even launched a system of political ad transparency, let alone launched systems addressing issue-based political ads — despite the country’s looming general election on April 28; its third in four years. (Since 2015 elections in Spain have yielded heavily fragmented parliaments — making another imminent election not at all unlikely.)

In February, when we asked Facebook whether it would commit to launching ad transparency tools in Spain before the April 28 election, it offered no such commitment — saying instead that it sets up internal cross-functional teams for elections in every market to assess the biggest risks, and make contact with the relevant electoral commission and other key stakeholders.

Again, it’s not possible for outsiders to assess the efficacy of such internal efforts. But Avaaz’s findings suggest Facebook’s risk assessment of Spain’s general election has had a pretty hefty blindspot when it comes to proactively picking up malicious attempts to inflate far right propaganda.

Yet, at the same time, a regional election in Andalusia late last year returned a shock result and warning signs — with the tiny (and previously unelected) far right party, Vox, gaining around 10 per cent of the vote to take 12 seats.

Avaaz’s findings vis-a-vis the three bogus far right networks suggest that as well as seeking to slur leftwing/liberal political views and parties some of the inauthentic pages were involved in actively trying to amplify Vox — with one bogus page, Orgullo Nacional España, sharing a pro-Vox Facebook page 155 times in a three month period. 

Avaaz used the Facebook-owned social media monitoring tool Crowdtangle to get a read on how much impact the fake networks might have had.

It found that while the three inauthentic far right Facebook networks produced just 3.7% of the posts in its Spanish elections dataset, they garnered an impressive 12.6% of total engagement over the three month period it pulled data on (between January 5 and April 8) — despite consisting of just 27 Facebook pages and groups out of a total of 910 in the full dataset. 

Or, to put it another way, a handful of bad actors managed to generate enough divisive politically charged noise that more than one in ten of those engaging in Spanish election chatter on Facebook, per its dataset, at very least took note.

It’s a finding which neatly illustrates that divisive content being more clickable is not at all a crazy idea — whatever the founder of Facebook once said.

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Waymo picks Detroit factory to build self-driving cars

Waymo, the self-driving vehicle technology startup under Alphabet, is setting up shop in a Detroit factory on American Axle & Manufacturing’s campus.

Waymo said Tuesday it will partner with American Axle & Manufacturing to repurpose the existing facility, which was most recently used as a sequencing center for a local parts supplier. The goal is to begin moving into the facility by mid-2019 and begin preparing the site for manufacturing Level 4 autonomous vehicles. Level 4 is a designation by SAE that means the vehicle handles all of the driving under certain conditions.

“By choosing to establish its new facility in Detroit, Waymo is continuing the city’s momentum and further cementing Michigan as a leader in mobility and the epicenter of advanced automotive manufacturing,” Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement.

In January, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation voted to approve Waymo’s plan to set up a manufacturing facility in the state to build its self-driving vehicles. The MEDC approved an $8 million grant for the project.

Waymo has partnered with Magna to build thousands of self-driving cars at the factory, including autonomous versions of the all-electric Jaguar I-PACE and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan, in a bid to deploy its ride-hailing service at scale.

In December, Waymo launched a limited commercial robotaxi service in the Phoenix area, dubbed Waymo One.

The Waymo One self-driving car service, and accompanying app, still has Waymo-trained test drivers behind the wheel. The safety driver will eventually be removed from the vehicle. The service has slowly opened up to more people.

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The 5 Best Airpods Alternatives

SiriusXM Essential Means You No Longer Need a Car

SiriusXM has launched a new streaming subscription package called SiriusXM Essential. While SiriusXM is best known for offering satellite radio in your car, Essential is just for streaming, meaning you no longer need to own a car to listen to SiriusXM.

SiriusXM Launches SiriusXM Essential

SiriusXM has launched Sirius XM Essential citing the fact that “approximately two-thirds of people in the U.S. (ages 12+) stream their audio entertainment”. SiriusXM has essentially realized it needs to start catering to people who don’t listen in their cars.

Essential is “for people who want to listen on a mobile phone, tablet, desktop, and on connected devices in the home including devices with Amazon Alexa, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, Sonos speakers, Xbox, Sony PlayStation and more”.

What Do You Get With SiriusXM Essential?

Essential gets you 200+ music channels, 100 SiriusXM Xtra channels, several sports talk channels, plus an “array of entertainment, news and comedy programming choices.” However, there’s no Howard Stern, or the NBA, NHL, and NCAA channels.

In the press release introducing SiriusXM Essential, SiriusXM’s Matt Epstein said:

“We’ve now created the Essential subscription as an appealing option for the many people, particularly younger consumers, who don’t have a car or don’t spend a lot of time in their car. The Essential package offers an attractive bundle of content at a competitively low price among streaming services.”

SiriusXM Essential costs $8/month, but you can try it first for $1/month for three months.

Streaming Is the Future of Everything

This is a good move by SiriusXM. All signs point to streaming being the future of, well, everything. So while there will still be people listening in their cars, offering access to streamers for a reduced price makes absolute sense.

In addition to launching its Essential subscription package, SiriusXM has wasted no time in making use of its acquisition of Pandora. So people only interested in podcasts can now listen to SiriusXM shows on Pandora without the need to pay a penny.

Read the full article: SiriusXM Essential Means You No Longer Need a Car

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How to Create a Bootable USB Drive From Your Windows CD

Do you have a Windows CD or DVD, but cannot use your optical drive to install your Windows operating system on your new computer? Maybe you are worried about CD/DVD rot and want to create a backup?

Instead of a disc, you can use a USB flash drive to install Windows. Flash drives are smaller, have more storage, and if you use the right tool, you can boot multiple operating systems from the same drive.

Here’s how you create a bootable USB flash drive from your Windows installation CD.

The Benefits of USB Flash Drive Installation Media

There are several situations where USB flash drive installation media is better than a DVD or CD:

• You can easily create backup installation media.
• Significantly faster installation rate versus regular installation media.
• Keep your original installation media in pristine condition.
• Easy to carry multiple operating systems on a single USB drive.

Our relationship with Windows CDs and DVDs is different, too. For instance, you can purchase an official Windows 10 USB flash drive instead of a DVD or CD. Discs are still available but are far from the only method of installation. Furthermore, if you purchase new hardware with Windows preinstalled, there’s a chance you will never have installation media unless you make it yourself. (Read on to find out how!)

Copy Your Windows Installation Disc Using WinToFlash

If you have a Windows installation disc that you want to update to a USB flash drive, WinToFlash makes it an easy task to create a CD to USB bootable drive. The WinToFlash Lite edition will create a bootable USB flash drive directly from your existing Windows installation CD. Here’s how you do it.

1. First head to the WinToFlash site, then download and install the WinToFlash Lite edition. After installation, WinToFlash will open automatically.
2. Accept the EULA, and view the non-intrusive advert before continuing.
3. Make sure your Windows installation disc is your optical drive, as well as the USB flash drive you want to copy your installation too.
4. Now, select Windows Setup Bootable USB Wizard, then I have CD inserted into my computer…, followed by Next.
5. On the next page specify the location of your Windows installation disc in the first box, and the destination USB flash drive in the second. Select Next to confirm your settings, agree to the terms of the license agreement, and Continue.

Please be aware that this process will format your USB flash drive and you will lose all existing data permanently.

The Windows CD to bootable USB flash drive copy process can take some time to complete, so go and pop the kettle on.

WinToFlash Multiboot

WinToFlash also has multiboot support. You can build a customized bootable USB drive filled with Linux distros, recovery disks, and other handy tools. The only limit is the size of your USB drive.

Note: WinToFlash Lite will only allow two ISOs on your multiboot. I’ve curated a comprehensive list of multiboot USB tools that do the job much better, and without restriction.

1. Head back to the Wizard mode tab and select Mutiboot USB Drive Creation Menu.
2. On the next screen, select Add. This opens the Add new item panel. Like other multiboot USB drive tools, WinToFlash has a long list of potential tools. Scroll down the list and select a tool.
3. The option to Download selected ISO now will appear. Choose this option to download the latest version of the selected tool or OS. Alternatively, you can select and add ISOs already stored on your computer.
4. Complete your selection and select Run.

Create Windows ISO From Original Installation Media Using ImgBurn

If you prefer a more manual approach to rip your Windows installation media, you can use ImgBurn. ImgBurn is a great free tool that you can use to write an image file to disc or create an image file from an existing disc.

1. Head to the ImgBurn website. Download and install ImgBurn.
2. After installing, open ImgBurn. Make sure your original Windows installation media is in your optical drive.
3. Select Create image file from disc.
4. Select the Windows installation media drive source, then set the Destination
5. Hit the Read button to begin the process.

The disc image creation process depends on the write speed of your optical drive, so this could take a moment.

Once your Windows installation media image file (ISO) finishes ripping, you can move onto the next section where you will use Rufus to create a bootable USB flash drive.

Burn Windows Installation ISO to USB Flash Drive Using Rufus

Now you can burn the Windows installation ISO ripped from your original installation disc as a bootable USB flash drive. Rufus is a handy tool for all manner of bootable USB burning tasks. It is simple and gets the job done—a great combination! Here’s what you need to do:

1. Head to the Rufus website, then download and install the latest version of the tool.
2. Open Rufus. Under Device, select the USB flash drive you want to use.
3. Under Boot Selection, hit Select, then browse to the location of the Windows installation ISO created in the last section.
4. Set a new volume label, so you know what’s on the USB flash drive in the future.
5. Select Start.

Wait for Rufus to complete the burn process Once complete, you have successfully manually moved your Windows installation disc to a bootable USB flash drive. Better still, you made a Windows installation media backup in the process (the ISO from the last section).

Use the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool

WinToFlash is great for automating the disc to USB flash drive process. ImgBurn and Rufus are great if you want to do it yourself. But you don’t have to use either of those methods. At least, not if you don’t want to and you’re using Windows 10.

The Microsoft Media Creation Tool makes the process of downloading a Windows ISO simple. Accordingly, the Media Creation Tool automatically downloads an ISO to your specification, eliminating the need for copying physical media to your computer, then onto your USB flash drive.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Download and run the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool. Accepting the licensing agreement.
2. Select Create installation media for another PC.
3. Select the language, edition, and architecture of your operating system. The Media Creation Tool offers recommended settings. However, if you are downloading for a different system, you may need to change these.
4. Next, choose either USB flash drive or ISO file. The latter creates an ISO file with the details you entered on the previous page, which you can install using a USB burning tool like Rufus.
5. In this case, choose USB flash drive and continue.
6. Select the USB flash drive, then create the installation media. The Media Creation Tool will download the latest version of Windows 10, so it will take a moment.

Can I Boot From USB?

This is a very common question. It is largely system specific but can be altered by the user via the BIOS. This is controlled by the boot sequence.

Your system will usually seek to boot from wherever your OS is installed. The drive containing your main OS will be the first option in the boot sequence. It is possible to manually override this, instead of booting from a USB drive containing new installation media.

BIOS configurations are different for each manufacturer. I would suggest searching the internet for “[hardware manufacturer] BIOS tutorial/boot sequence.”

Create a Bootable USB from a CD or DVD

You’re now ready to create a bootable USB flash drive from your Windows installation CD or DVD. This installation process should speed up your next clean installation while giving you the chance to get rid of some of those pesky old discs. Just remember to write down your license codes and keep them in a safe place!

Can’t find your old license codes? Here are your options for a cheap and legal Windows license.

Read the full article: How to Create a Bootable USB Drive From Your Windows CD

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Spark Is the Best Google Inbox Alternative: 11 Reasons Why It’s Worth a Look

Linedock: The Best MacBook Pro Accessory

Our verdict of the Linedock 13":
The Linedock is the gorgeous Swiss Army knife of MacBook accessories. If the SD slot speeds were improved and it sprouted a LAN port it would be perfect.910

Apple’s recent charge more for less philosophy has led to some MacBook users feeling a little unsatisfied with the lack of connectivity. Except for the headphone jack, MacBooks are shipped with USB Type-C exclusively. Can the Linedock satisfy your connectivity needs? Let’s find out.

Specifications

• Number of USB-C Ports: 3
• USB-C Spec: USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) / DisplayPort
• USB-C Power: Power Delivery 2.0 / 5V – 3A / 9V – 3A / 15V – 3A / 20V – 5A
• Number of USB-A Ports: 3
• USB-A Spec: USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
• USB-A Power: Qualcomm QuickCharge 3.0 (12W)
• Pass-through Charging: Yes / 100W
• Display: Single Display / 4K @ 60Hz
• USB-C Video: Yes
• HDMI Video: Yes / HDMI 2.0
• Mini DisplayPort: Yes / DisplayPort 1.2
• SD Card Slot: Yes
• Battery: 20,000 mAh / 71.61 Wh
• Battery Output: 60W (20V / 5A)
• Pass-through Charging: 100W (20V – 5A)
• Internal Storage: 0GB / 256GB / 1TB
• Internal Storage Spec: SATA III (6 Gbps) – M.2 2280 / Bootable
• Dimensions: 11.97 x 8.36 x 0.35 inches (30.41 x 21.24 x 0.9 cm)
• Weight: 2 pounds (912 g)
• Colors: Space grey / Black
• Price: $399 with 256GB storage

Overview

The Linedock ultimately aims to replace three things. A USB-C dongle, a power bank, and an external SSD. These are probably the first few items you purchase to kit out any laptop you may own, especially the MacBook.

The device is absolutely gorgeous. It’s designed and manufactured from aluminum and looks like a MacBook that’s had its screen removed. Its dimensions make it no larger than the MacBook as well so that when stacked it doesn’t look out of place. Stacking also means it will take up less real estate on your desk compared to a tangled mess of dongles.

Line also sell a purpose-built U-shaped USB-C connector, which further adds to the minimalism. It’s worth noting that you should plug in the U module on the left side of your MacBook to avoid blocking the headphone jack, however, it works on either side.

The box includes the Linedock, reading material, and a cheeky graveyard to store your old dongles. The optional magnetic and U modules arrive in little tins and are almost certain to put a smile on your face. Line has put a lot of effort into the packaging, and it shows. Good start!

Connectivity

The Linedock is garnished with a delicious selection of ports. There are three USB-C, three USB-A ports, and an SD slot. There’s also HDMI and Mini DisplayPort if you’d like to connect to an external display. You could also take advantage of a USB-C display if you so desire.

You can only use a single display at a time, and it’s limited to 4K at 60Hz. This is something to consider if you require dual display or any resolution above that. So unless your monitor has VGA or DVI, the Linedock has you covered.

The only port that the Linedock doesn’t have is Ethernet. This may not be a big issue for everyone, but it was for me. All of my video editing is done on my server, and Wi-Fi speeds can’t cope with the bandwidth required. If your workload is heavily reliant on wired ethernet, you might need an ethernet adapter, but that’s counter-intuitive.

Other than that, the Linedock meets any use case. All ports are easily accessible regardless if you’re in stacked or unstacked mode. The best part is that your external SSD isn’t taking up one of your precious ports because it’s built right into the Linedock.

Storage

When purchasing a Linedock, you can choose between no storage, 256 GB, and 1 TB versions. The built-in storage comes from a SanDisk M.2 SSD which is connected via SATA III. Write speeds topped out around 225 MB per second with read speeds reaching around 250 MB per second.

The SSD is automatically detected when connecting the Linedock and can also be used as a boot drive. This means you could dual boot your Mac with Windows or even another instance of macOS. The Linedock also makes a great place to store your TimeMachine backups.

Another anti-Apple pattern is making the Linedock easy to open up if you’d like to change the SSD. If you do open up your Linedock, it will greet you with a brilliant little light show. Line has gone through the trouble of painting a world map on the internals and paid homage to the people who created it by the clever use of colored LEDs.

The SD Card slot speeds were a little disappointing. Read and write speeds topped out around 20 MB per second. This is far slower than a typical USB SD Card reader. While the Linedock may be compatible with the fastest SD cards, it certainly doesn’t have the speed to match. There’s definitely room for improvement when it comes to the storage speeds, but it may not be a deal breaker for you if you seldom use SD cards.

Power

Capacity and Output

The Linedock sports a 20,000 mAh battery which should be enough to support a small colony on Mars. Even after fully charging a 13″ MacBook Pro there will still be around 6000 mAh left to charge other devices.

Power output for a single port tops out at 60W meaning it can supply enough power to charge your MacBook quickly. The Linedock also supports pass-through charging through the rear port for up to 100W. You can charge up to six devices simultaneously, and power is distributed quite cleverly.

Think of the total power available, either 60W or 100W, as a budget so to speak. So if you had the following devices plugged in:

• Linedock Internal Battery (60W)
• iPad (12W)
• iPhone (18W)
• Nintendo Switch (18W)
• 13″ MacBook Pro (60W)

The total watts required to charge all devices to 100% will be 168W. If you connect a 60W charger to the Linedock, it will charge all of the above by sharing the power and if necessary will wait until one or two devices are fully charged to charge the remaining ones. If there is any power left, it will be used to charge the internal battery of the Linedock. This makes the Linedock an intelligent power distribution system as well!

Saiyan Mode

If you’re familiar with the Dragonball series you should know what Saiyan is. Charging power output is doubled.  Saiyan mode works by double-clicking the battery indicator button which will turn the LEDs yellow. The rationale behind this is that your MacBook needs only 30W of power to sustain its battery life. But you may want to actually fast charge it which is what Saiyan mode is for.

This does mean the Linedock and your MacBook will get run a little hotter than usual, so you will need to use it in unstacked mode. One thing to note about unstacked mode is that you will require a decent USB-C Cable in order to use both power and data transfer from the Linedock. The standard cable that Apple sells just isn’t good enough, unfortunately. On the bright side, the one that Line sell is perfect!

Compatibility

The Linedock is marketed for the 2017 or 2018 13″ MacBook Pro specifically. This is because of its size and aesthetic. That being said there are cases which people have used Windows laptops from Lenovo and Huawei and have had no issues at all. Everything from power to the ports works exactly as intended.

The best thing about the compatibility is that the Linedock supports both EMUI and DEX. So if you had a phone like the Samsung Galaxy S10 or a Huawei Mate 20, you could connect it to the Linedock and use your phone with an external display, mouse, and keyboard. Everything from the internal storage and SD card slot become accessible via your phone as well!

If you own a 15″ MacBook pro and feeling a little left out, worry not. Linedock plans to release a 15″ version which will beef up the power specs and cooling required for the more powerful 15″ MacBook Pro.

The Verdict

If you had to tally up the price for everything the LineDock replaces such as a power bank, external SSD, dongles, and power distributor you’d end up paying roughly $260, which is around $150 less than the cost of a LineDock.

However, this isn’t really a fair comparison as none of those devices are going to provide you with the one cable experience or space saving that the Linedock has. You’re paying a premium for a premium device that looks and feels the part. The devices falls a little short in SD card slot speeds and could maybe do with a wired ethernet port.

There are undoubtedly purpose-made devices that outperform the Linedock, but there are none that boast the unbridled versatility or aesthetic. It really is the Swiss Army knife of MacBook accessories. If you’ve just purchased or are thinking about buying a new MacBook Pro, the Linedock should definitely be on your radar.

Most of all the company behind the Linedock make an effort where it counts. Little things like messages on the battery, the overall presentation, naming conventions, and appreciation for their team go a long way in making you feel special. They aim to be exceptional and have indeed come up with an exceptional product.

Enter the Competition!

Linedock Giveaway

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The 7 Best Wi-Fi USB Adapters

What Is a Proxy Server?

Every day, people use proxy servers to enhance their privacy as they surf the internet. But what is a proxy server, and how do people use it with their web browsing?

Let’s take a look into what proxy servers are, why people use them, and how you might be able to use them yourself.

What Is a Proxy Server?

A proxy server is a special kind of server dedicated to acting as a middle man. It works by sitting between you and the website you want to visit. Instead of visiting a website yourself, you tell the proxy server to connect to it for you. The proxy server connects to it, gets the data from it, then relays the data back to you.

This is like hiring a messenger to deliver mail to someone. If you don’t want your recipient to know the letter is from you, you can give it to a third party who delivers it on your behalf. That way, you can get the message sent and not worry about revealing who you are.

What Is a Proxy Server Used For?

Personal Uses

By using a middle-man to browse the internet, you can hide your identity from the websites you visit. If you’re concerned about your privacy, you could use a proxy server to prevent websites from learning your location.

Websites can tell where you’re connecting from via your IP address. If a website blacklisted your country, it can identify you’re connecting from it via your IP address and block you.

As a result, proxy servers are an excellent option for people who want to visit websites which have country restrictions, typically due to rights agreements. For example, you can watch TV shows on BBC iPlayer, using a proxy server located in the UK and connecting to iPlayer through it.

When iPlayer checks your geographical location, it sees the proxy server’s IP instead of your own. It recognizes the proxy server as a UK-based source and permits the server to access its data. This data is passed onto you, allowing you to watch Doctor Who no matter where you are!

Business Uses

Proxy servers are more than just a way to hide, however. Due to their “middle-man” nature, proxy servers can also monitor connections going out to the internet. As a result, it allows businesses to ensure their employees aren’t looking at bad things that go against company policy.

A proxy server can sit between the employees and the internet, watching the connections. Every time a worker wants to visit a website, it goes through the proxy server which checks to ensure everything is fine. If the employee is found to be browsing a blacklisted site, the proxy server redirects the user to a webpage informing the user that they can’t access it.

What Proxies Can’t Do

Hide Browsing History

Proxy servers only affect the connection you’re on; therefore, it doesn’t alter anything on your computer or browser. As such, while proxy servers are great at hiding your identity from websites, it doesn’t hide your browsing history on your browser.

Everything you visit will still get logged in your history, so be sure to employ your browser’s private browsing feature if you want to do some secret gift shopping.

Protect Your Data From Your ISP

Unlike a VPN service, a proxy server doesn’t hide your browsing habits from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). While the sites you visit won’t be able to identify you, your data has to go through your ISP to reach the proxy server. As a result, proxy servers are a poor choice if you want privacy from a prying ISP.

Encrypt the Data You Send and Receive

Because nothing changes between your computer and the proxy server, this means all data sent to the proxy server doesn’t go through any extra encryption, unlike a VPN. Therefore, proxy servers aren’t a solution for protecting your data from prying eyes over unsecured connections.

Are Proxy Servers Safe?

Just like a messenger, proxy servers are a great way to mask the identity of the original sender; however, you have to choose your proxy server carefully.

Much like how an untrustworthy messenger can take a peek at any messages you send, a malicious proxy server can analyze the communications as they come through. They may even transmit malware to your PC as you use it!

It’s best to use a trusted, perhaps paid, proxy server service when using them. Using free proxy servers comes with a set of risks which is unsuitable for performing sensitive tasks.

Making a Personal Proxy Server

Of course, one way to avoid using a public proxy server is to make your own. Consequently, you know exactly how it’s run, who’s using it, and what to expect from it.

It’s no easy feat, but if you’re skilled enough, it’s entirely possible to create your own online proxy server. You could even rent a server overseas, and access content restricted to that country from the comfort of your own home!

Other Ways to Hide Your Identity

Proxy servers are useful for hiding your location, but they’re not the only way. Any service that masks your home IP address is useful for hiding yourself. These methods range from using a public Wi-Fi connection in a cafe to utilizing a VPN server in a different country.

There are many ways you can use a “fake” IP address to mask yourself, so be sure to read into them and pick out the ones that suit your needs best.

Surfing Better With Web Proxies

While they’re not a perfect solution to all your privacy concerns, proxy servers can be a great aid if you want to perform simple tasks. There are even free servers out there you can use; however, you should act with caution and ensure you’re not connecting to a malicious one!

Ready to use a proxy server for yourself? Here are the best web proxies on the internet.

Read the full article: What Is a Proxy Server?

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Make Linux Look Like Windows 10 With These Tips and Tweaks

If you’re a longtime Linux user, you’ve probably got your favorite theme or themes. If you’re new to Linux though, you might find the entire environment to be far from welcoming. Making your desktop look like something you’re used to could help you get acquainted with Linux more easily.

One of Linux’s strengths is its flexibility, so it’s easy to make it look like whatever you want. This includes making it look like Windows. Once you’re more familiar with the system, you can customize it to look and work any way you like.

The Quick Way

If you use Ubuntu, which a lot of people do, there’s actually a very quick option. It’s so quick that you can go from standard Ubuntu to a Windows lookalike in a matter of seconds. It’s mainly based on Windows 10, but there are touches of Windows XP and Windows 7 as well.

This approach uses the UKUI Desktop Environment, and we have a guide to getting it up and running. It’s easy to install and if you don’t like it, it’s easy to remove as well.

While this method is easy, it’s not without its drawbacks. First, while it’s close, it doesn’t look exactly like Windows 10. Second, since it’s a complete desktop re-skin, you can’t do much to customize it.

If you’d rather dive in and get your hands dirty, read on for a more customizable approach.

Change Your Linux Desktop Theme

The theme we’re going to be using is from the Boomerang Project. There are a few reasons for this, but the main reason is that it works on multiple desktops.

GNOME is the default desktop for modern Ubuntu and other distributions, but you might be using something else. The Boomerang Win 10 theme is compatible with Gnome, Cinnamon, Unity, Openbox, MATE, Fluxbox, and Xfce. It requires GTK 3.6 or higher and the Murrine GTK 2 rendering engine. If you’ve got those, you’re good to go.

Install Boomerang Win 10

First head to the Boomerang Win 10 download page. The theme is available in two versions: light and dark. Download one or both.

Extract the files in your graphical file manager of choice. You can also do so with the following command in the terminal:

cd ~/Downloads
unzip Windows-10-2.0.1.zip

Note that the filename may be different for you. Now it’s time to move the theme or themes to your themes directory. If you haven’t already installed themes, you may need to create the folder with the following command:

mkdir ~/.themes

Now, from the Downloads directory (or wherever you downloaded the theme files), run the following to move the theme to the themes directory.

mv Windows-10-2.0.1 ~/.themes/

Again, you may need to change the filename. If you’re running GNOME, you’ll need to install GNOME Tweaks to change the theme. You can install it by running the following:

sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

Confirm that you want to install it and wait while it installs. Now you can change your theme. In Ubuntu, launch Tweaks from the Application launcher. Navigate to Appearance in the left-hand panel. Under Applications in the Themes section, select Windows-10-2.0.1 or similar.

If you use another desktop environment, the instructions for actually setting the theme will differ, but the rest of the process is the same. In other desktops, you’re not going to have to install a new app just to change your theme. This means you can just poke through menus until you find what you’re looking for.

Change Your Icons

You’re part of the way to making your Linux desktop look like Windows 10, but changing the icons will be a big help. To get started, go to the Boomerang Windows 10 icon GitHub page. Here click on Clone or download, then select Download ZIP.

As you did with the theme, unzip the archive. You can do this in your file manager or in the terminal.

cd ~/Downloads
unzip Windows-10-master.zip

Now you can move this to the directory for your icon themes. As with the application themes, you might need to create this directory:

mkdir ~/.icons

Now move the freshly extracted icon theme folder to the directory:

mv Windows-10-master ~/.icons/

Now, if you’re on Ubuntu, open Tweaks, head back to the Appearance pane, and under Icons, select Windows-10-master.

As with the application theme, if you’re using another desktop, steps for actually selecting the new icon theme differ. After you’ve found out how to change your application theme, changing your icon theme should be similar.

Change Your Wallpaper

If you want to go all the way, you’ll want to change your wallpaper. If you’re the type that never changed your Windows 10 wallpaper, you probably don’t want to do this step. Still, if you’re seeing just how much you can make Linux look like Windows 10, this step is essential.

If you have a computer running Windows 10, you can just copy the wallpaper over from there. If you don’t want to do this, don’t worry. The default Windows 10 wallpapers are available in an Imgur album courtesy of MSPoweruser.

Want to Make Your Desktop Even More Like Windows?

Now that you’ve got your application theme, icon theme, and wallpaper set, you’re most of the way there. Depending on which desktop environment you use, your setup might feel more or less like Windows. If you use GNOME, however, you’ll notice you’re still a way off.

To get the most out of the Boomerang Project theme and to make your desktop the most like Windows, you might want to consider changing your desktop environment to Cinnamon. By default, Cinnamon has a taskbar along that bottom of the screen similar to that in Windows 10.

The Grouped Window List applet will group window icons together as Windows 10 does, and it’s even installed in Cinnamon by default. Using the Slingshot applet will replace your menu with one that looks much more like the Windows 10 Start menu.

Want Linux to Look Like macOS Instead?

We’ve covered how to make Linux look like Windows, but what about macOS? As mentioned above, the customization options make that easy. The Boomerang Project even offers themes that look like macOS, so many of the same tips here still apply.

Still, if you’re looking for an easier method, we have a walkthrough for theming Linux to look like macOS. We also have a list of tips to make switching from macOS to Linux easier.

Read the full article: Make Linux Look Like Windows 10 With These Tips and Tweaks

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The 5 Best Gimbals for the iPhone

How to Delete Your Personal Data From Public Record Websites

When someone Googles your name, there’s a whole host of information about you they might find. Sometimes this is good, like finding links to your personal website or Twitter account. But sometimes there is information that you don’t want to share online, like your home address or phone number.

Directory listing websites can hold a lot of your personal information. But fortunately there is a way to get this information taken down. In this article, we’ll show you have to take control of your personal data and get your details deleted from these websites.

What Types of Sites Collect Your Personal Data?

You might be shocked by how many websites list information about you. Sites like online directories, address listing sites, and background check websites are common. You’ll find sites like Whitepages.com, which lists personal information on many people in the U.S. (In the U.K., 192.com does the same thing.)

Often these sites have some information available publicly. Then they charge people to access more information such as full addresses.

The idea is that these sites can offer useful information for potential employers, skip tracers, or journalists. But this data can very easily be misused. And you never know who is looking at your personal information.

What Information About You Is Available Online?

These sites can gather a lot of information about you, including:

• Your name
• Your current home address
• Other addresses where you have previously lived
• Your email address
• Your mobile and home phone numbers
• Date of birth
• Names of your relatives
• Details of any criminal convictions
• Details of arrests that did not lead to a conviction
• Names of your friends, business partners, or housemates
• Whether you are married or divorced and the name of your spouse
• Your education
• Your employer
• Assets, such as whether you own a house

Some sites may even have access to much more sensitive personal data such as your social security number.

What’s Wrong With Personal Info Being Available?

When you see it listed out like that, it’s pretty scary how much information about you can be obtained. Especially as all it takes to find is a quick Google search. If you’re concerned about privacy, you should get this information taken down. This is particularly important if you want to avoid being stalked or harassed.

But there’s another reason to be concerned about the availability of this data too. Having this information easily available makes you vulnerable to identify theft, spear phishing, SIM swaps, and other cyber attacks. The more people who can access your personal details, the easier it is for someone to pretend to be you or to target you in an attack.

Simply: anyone can steal your identity.

Where Do These Websites Get Their Data?

Although these sites may be annoying and intrusive, they are not illegal. Even though you didn’t give you information to the sites personally, they merely collate information which is already publicly available.

Often these sites source data from public government databases. These include the electoral roll, census records, criminal conviction databases, marriage certificate records, land use records, and more.

While you have to accept that some information about you will be publicly available, it’s quite a different story to have all this data available on one website. It’s also concerning that this information is accessible through a simple Google search.

Another source of information that many sites use is your social media profiles. If you have publicly accessible personal information available on your Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter account, it will likely end up on a directory site. You might want to delete information from social media sites. Also you can consider whether you share too much information online.

How to Remove Your Information From Public Sites

It used to be that listings websites would make it very difficult for you to remove your data. Often they would request annoying things like printing and posting a paper form, or even requiring you to send a fax.

But now, thanks in part to new EU data control laws, the sites must give you a reasonable way to remove your details. Even if you live outside the EU, if the site operates within Europe then it must allow you to remove your information.

Unfortunately there is no way to opt out of all these sites at once. You will have to submit a request for your data to be removed from each site individually. But it shouldn’t take too long. Usually you just need to fill out an online form and the site will take down your details within a few days.

A word of warning though: sometimes sites will ask for more of your details in the removal form. You should only ever give the details that the site already has. For example, maybe a site lists your name and address but not your phone number. When you fill out the removal form you should only put in your name and address.

If the site asks for a phone number or email address, use a fake one. Don’t give any more information to these sites than they already have.

Where to Go to Remove Your Information

Here is a list of some of the most common data collection websites with links to their respective opt out pages:

• WhitePages
• 411.info
• PeopleFinders
• USA-People-Search
• BeenVerified
• 192.com
• PeekYou
• Intelius
• Radaris

You can find a longer list of personal data websites with instructions on how to remove your details from each at wiki.onerep.com.

The best way to check which sites you need to remove your data from is by running a search on yourself. Enter your name into Google and see what comes up. If you have a common name, add your state or zip code to the search query to filter out irrelevant results.

Remove Your Personal Data and Stay Safe

Directory sites, background check sites, and address listing sites are all common. They can list information about you without your permission.

But you can get your data taken down. Using the links in this article you can have your personal data removed from these websites which will help protect you against cyber attacks.

While you’re at it, you might also want to clear your data from Google to further improve your online privacy.

Image Credit: lightsource/Depositphotos

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Verizon and Google ink deal to offer YouTube TV to Verizon wireless and Fios subscribers

Just days after Google and Amazon buried the hatchet over their longstanding streaming feud, Google has made another interesting inroad in its bid to bring yet more ubiquity to its YouTube-based premium video efforts. Today, Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) and the search giant announced a new partnership where Verizon customers will be able to subscribe to YouTube TV through their accounts to watch “on whatever platform they choose,” in the words of Erin McPheron, Verizon’s head of content strategy and acquisition.

That will mean, in Verizon terms, getting a YouTube TV stream if you are a 5G wireless home customer as part of an internet bundle, or as part of your Fios subscription if you are a customer of Verizon’s fiber-optic TV, telephone and internet service. It sounds like there will be other options to come. “Verizon will also offer unique, high-value YouTube TV promotions to customers across platforms,” the company added.

YouTube TV is an all-in-one bundle that essentially replaces the kinds of packages offered by cable TV providers that includes some 70 networks such as ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC, cable channels like HGTV, Food Network, TNT, TBS, CNN, ESPN, FX and on-demand video, which also includes DVR options for each of the six accounts that comes with a subscription, along with recommendation algorithms (similar to Netflix’s) for each viewer. It looks like the YouTube TV offer will sit alongside other bundles that Verizon already offers to users, for example see these action/entertainment, kids and sports/news bundles of channels on Fios. Fios also offers new customers one free year of Netflix.

The deal underscores Verizon’s ongoing efforts to play nice with third-party content providers to continue enhancing the array of services that consumers have to choose from at Verizon. More options helps sweeten the deal and keep people from moving to other services, or away from any bundles at all and opting to create their own a la carte selections, cord-cutter style.

This is especially important as it continues to build out its next-generation 5G wireless network and looks for more subscribers and usage of it. In its earnings report earlier today, Verizon reported that it was investing some $4.3 billion in capex in the first quarter of the year to build out that 5G network, which is in part meant to help optimise video traffic over wireless networks.

“Our network and technology leadership uniquely positions us to lead the content revolution, which centers around choice for our customers,” said McPherson in a statement. “As we pave the path forward on 5G, we’ll continue to bring our customers options and access to premium content by teaming up with the best providers in the industry and leveraging our network as-a service strategy. We were first in the world to bring commercial 5G to our customers and now another first on the content front as we offer our customers access to YouTube TV on whatever platform they choose.”

For Google, it gives the company — in hot competition with a number of other over-the-top streaming providers like Amazon and Netflix and Apple — one more route to reaching consumers wherever they happen to be already, and whether they are watching on a mobile phone or a TV in their living rooms. It’s not clear in the release, but it would be interesting to know if Verizon provides preferred bandwidth to a service as part of the partnership that would improve the quality of the stream.

As a point of comparison, last week Google said that YouTube users on Fire TV will be able to sign in, have full access to their library and play videos in 4K HDR at 60 fps on supported devices.

It’s not clear what kind of pricing Verizon will offer for YouTube TV, which costs $49.99 per month in the US for new customers.

“YouTube TV has become known for its best-in-class user experience that enhances the way users watch live TV today,” said Heather Rivera, global head of product partnerships at YouTube, in a statement. “With this partnership, we’re making it simple and seamless for Verizon’s customers to sign up to enjoy YouTube TV on-the-go on their mobile phones or tablets or at home on their big screen devices.”

We’ll update this post as we learn more.

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$44M-funded Omni pivots from storage to rentals via retailers

Omni simply couldn’t scale storing stuff in giant warehouses while dropping it and off picking it up from people on demand. Storage was designed to bootstrap Omni into peer-to-peer rentals of the goods in its care. But now it’s found a better way by partnering with retailers which will host and rent out goods for Omni that users will pick up themselves.

With that strategy, Omni is now formally pivoting from storage alongside its expansion from San Francisco and Portland into Los Angeles and New York. In SF and its new markets starting today, users can rent GoPros, strollers, drills, guitars, and more for pick up and drop off at 100 local storefronts which will receive 80 percent of the revenue while Omni keeps 20 percent.

“Storage was always meant to supply a rentals marketplace. We launched storage in an Uber-for everything era and now it’s no secret that physical operations are tough to scale” Omni’s COO Ryan Delk tells me. “This new model gives our users more supply, local entrepreneurs a new revenue stream, and us the ability to launch new markets much more quickly than the old model of building rentals on top of the storage business.”

LA Omni users will be able to rent surf equipment for pickup and dropoff from local surf shop Jay’s

To that end, storage won’t come to any more markets, though storage services with delivery will continue in San Francisco. Users there and in Portland will also be able to pick up and drop off rental items from a few Omni-owned locations including its SF headquarter office. Omni will add retailer pickups in Portland and more in San Francisco soon. At least that’s one way to make Omni’s investors like Highland, Founders Fund, Shrug.vc, and Dream Machine feel better about SF real estate prices. Omni also recently doubled the monthly storage price of closed bins in SF, triggering ire from customers to cover its overhead and encourage storing individual items that can then be rented out

“Ownership has a bit of a burden associated with it” Delk tells me, referencing the shifting attitudes highlighted by Marie Kondo and the tidiness movement. Ownership requires you to pay up front for tons of use down the line that may never happen. “Paying for access when you need it unlocks all these amazing experiences.”

Omni’s COO Ryan Delk (left) and CEO Thomas McCleod (right)

Omni discovered the potential for the model when it ran an experiment. “What if we could pick up items directly from Omni?” Delk explains. Omni learned that many people “can’t afford to pay for transit both ways. It was pricing out a lot of people.” But pick-ups unlocked a new price demographic.

Meanwhile, Omni noticed some semi-pro renters had cropped up on its platform who were buying tons of a popular item like chairs on Amazon, shipping them to its warehouse, then renting them out and quickly recouping their costs. It saw an opportunity to partner with local retailers who could give it instant supplies of items in new markets while handling all the pick up and drop off logistics.

Omni’s retail partners like Adventure 16 Outdoor & Travel Outfitters, Blazing Saddles and Sierra Surf School can choose their own prices and adjust for demand, set black-out dates, pause for vacations, and sell items like normal and let Omni know to restock them so rentals don’t cannibalize their sales. Rentals are covered by up to $10,000 in insurance so both the retailers and people who rent from them don’t have to worry. Omni users just show their ID at pick up to verify their identity, but that will soon be part of the app. Last fall, Omni hired Uber’s head of sales strategy and operations who oversaw UberEats growth from zero to 200,000 restaurants to run its retail partnerships as VP of special projects.

Delk says Omni is “all-in on the rentals” which he sees as a “pure play marketplace vs a recurring ARR business” that “democratizes access to Omni to people who aren’t the 1% in major markets.” Now someone who couldn’t afford to buy a drill for a quick home improvement project or pay to have a rental delivered and picked up can drop by their local retailer to grab it and return it later for $6 per day with no extra fees.

That in-store experience of actually being able to go same-day, hold an item, and ask questions about it could allow Omni’s rental model to compete with Amazon’s prices and delivery logistics. The one thing Amazon can’t do right now is let you try before you buy. Omni could win by letting you try without ever having to.

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Twitter Q1 flies past estimates with sales of $787M and EPS of $0.25, but MAUs drop to 330M

Social networking and media platform Twitter today reported its results for the first quarter of the year, and it’s a strong one. The company said that revenues came in at $787 million, up 18 percent on a year ago; with net income of $191 million and earnings per share of $0.25. However, monthly active users continue to paint a challenging picture (no surprise that MAUs are a dying metric for the company). Twitter says MAUs were 330 million in Q1, a drop of 6 million users compared to a year ago, although up 9 million on last quarter.

Monetizable daily active users — Twitter’s new and preferred metric for user numbers — were 134 million in the quarter, up 11 percent on a year ago. (Note: the earlier 28 million figure we used here was US-only.)

Still, on the financial side, this is a strong set of results for the company. Going into today, average analyst expectations were for Twitter to post about $775 million in sales ($742-$815 million range) on an EPS of $0.15 per share ($0.10-$0.20 range). Twitter itself last quarter said it expected Q1 revenues to be between just $715 million and $775 million, with operating income between $5 million and $35 million.

Shares are up 6.22 percent so far in pre-market trading.

With those numbers relatively stabilised, Twitter is putting more focus on trying to improve its actual product in the two areas where it has been considered weak: the ability for people to use Twitter when it gets noisy and active; and the general “health” of content management, around harassment and fake news. For the former, it’s been tinkering with a prototype app called twttr, and for the latter, it’s been adding more rules that it is proactively enforcing, which it says has led to “helping [Twitter] remove 2.5 times more of this content since launch.”

The “initial focus” of the twttr app up to now has been to focus on conversations and how to make them easier to follow. This implies that the app could stay around for some time to come and become the testing ground for much more, including Twitter’s increasing forays into video and other content and how it manages bad actors on the platform: in other words, aspects of the service potentially represent opportunities for growth and monetization — or otherwise urgently need attention because if they don’t get resolved they will ultimately hinder both.

This is the last quarter that Twitter is reporting monthly active users, as it makes a switch instead to reporting “mDAUs”, or monetizeable daily active users, which it claims is a more accurate representation of how the business is growing. MAUs have not been a great metric for the company over the years, with one of Twitter’s strongest criticisms being that its user growth is stagnating. Given that the platform has a strong surge of usage around specific events, the average usage on days will work out stronger than that of usage on a monthly period.

As is the case with Facebook, a majority of Twitter’s users (but not revenues, see below) are coming from outside its home country of the US, where mDAUs were 28 million, compared to mDAUs of 105 million internationally.

Last quarter, while reporting a relatively strong set of Q4 earnings, we noted that Twitter’s stock dropped on that weak guidance, which represented a big drop from Q4 at a time (Q1) when many expect Twitter to report its strongest numbers.

As a point of comparison, a year ago in Q1 2018, Twitter posted revenues of $665 million, on an EPS of $0.16 per share, both blowing past Wall Street estimates with sales up 21 percent year-on-year.

Drilling down into where money is coming from for the company, the US is still Twitter’s biggest market in terms of revenues, if not users. The US accounted for $432 million, or 55 percent, of Twitter’s revenues, with international revenues at $355 million. To note, Twitter noted that the US is current the engine of its revenue growth, where figures were up 25 percent on last year (while international was only up 11 percent). Japan, it noted, continued to represent Twitter’s second-largest market, contributing $136 million to Q1 revenues.

It will be interesting to see how and if Twitter addresses that: since international represents such a large part of its user base, monetizing it more effectively could really give the company a boost.

In terms of what is actually making money for the company, advertising continues to be Twitter’s biggest cash cow. Of its $787 million in Q1 revenues, $679 million, or just over 86 percent, comes from advertising. That’s been a consistent proportion: ad revenues were up 18 percent, just like overall revenues. As with other social platforms, video is giving advertising a boost at Twitter. It specifically singled out Video Website Cards and in-stream pre-roll ads.

Data licensing and unspecified “other revenue” was $107 million, up 20 percent, and it sounds like Twitter isn’t expecting huge growth in this area. “DES continues to see new customer opportunities and use cases as well as smaller customers adopting our self-service APIs… however, we are now largely through our multiyear enterprise renewal cycle in DES. As a result, many of our largest partners are now at market pricing and data licensing revenue growth is likely to moderate for the full year,” it noted.

More to come from the call.

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