Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, February 19

• Uber is profitable in the US, but is losing $1 billion a year to compete in China: Uber is burning through more than a billion dollars a year in China as it wages a fierce price war against local rival Didi Kuaidi, its chief executive said. The company's Chinese business boosted its valuation last month to more than $8 billion after raising more than $1 billion in its latest funding round, but the U.S. ride-hailing app is not yet profitable in mainland China because of the intense competition. "We're profitable in the USA, but we're losing over $1 billion a year in China," Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told Canadian technology platform Betakit.  "We have a fierce competitor that's unprofitable in every city they exist in, but they're buying up market share. I wish the world wasn't that way."  The $1 billion figure was confirmed by Uber officials in China in an email to Reuters on Thursday. Uber and China's Didi Kuaidi, backed by Chinese technology giants Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding, have both spent heavily to subsidise fares to gain market share, betting on China's Internet-linked transport market becoming the world's biggest.

• Facebook Plans To Put Ads In Messenger: A leaked document Facebook sent to some of its biggest advertisers reveals that Facebook will launch ads within Messenger in Q2 2016. The document, obtained by TechCrunch but kept private to protect its verified source, says businesses will be able to send ads as messages to people who previously initiated a chat thread with that company. To prepare, the document recommends that businesses get consumers to start message threads with them now so they’ll be able to send them ads when the feature launches. The document also notes that Facebook has quietly launched a URL short link fb.com/msg/ that instantly opens a chat thread with a business. Facebook confirmed the existence of the URL short link. That seems to back up the validity of the leaked document. Messenger is one of Facebook’s most popular and fastest-growing products, with 800 million monthly active users. Yet the social network has never monetized it directly before. Thankfully for users, Facebook isn’t going to let brands send ad messages to just anyone or even people who’ve liked their Pages. Only those who have voluntarily chatted with a business can be sent ads. This should somewhat limit the spam potential and annoyance. Right now, almost all messages come from one’s friends, so Facebook will likely try to preserve this high signal-to-noise ratio with limits on advertising.

• Secondary Shops Flooded With Unicorn Sellers: Until recently, shares of some of the highest-flying unicorn companies have been so hard to come by that secondary buyers have battled each other, not to mention other investors, to acquire some of the startups’ common shares. As the fortunes of billion-dollar companies like Evernote have fizzled, however, so has their shareholders’ enthusiasm. Says the cofounder of one secondary shop who asked not to be named, “We aren’t seeing huge discounts yet in the top 10 names, but people are trying to dump them. It’s not just one person calling you about a particular company. It’s four.” Says another secondary investor, who also asked not to be identified for this story, “We’re seeing an enormous uptick in inbound selling interest.” The situation is changing so quickly that several people with whom we spoke say a number of new characters are now peddling shares of so-called “A List” companies whose shares would have been beyond nearly anyone’s reach six months ago. “We’re seeing a lot of sketchy people advertising these deals,” says one insider. It didn’t used to be like this. Just a year ago, demand for unicorn stock was at an unprecedented level, as were the number of companies establishing billion-dollar valuations for themselves. Unicorn coverage became a cottage industry unto itself, with tech outlets and even data analysis firms poring over which unicorns were the best employers, which companies were positioned to become unicorns, and which venture firms were the best at spotting unicorns early on, among other angles. Alas, by late August, China’s market was in a nose-drive, and both late-and early-stage investors began applying the brakes. It wasn’t long before non-traditional venture investors like Fidelity and Blackrock were slashing the valuations of some of the startups in the portfolio. A parade of well-reported WSJ pieces about what isn’t quite right at high-flying Theranos seemed to cement what many had started to think: That many unicorns really weren’t worth what their ambitious investors had settled on. (It didn’t help when, last week, the human resources startup Zenefits asked its CEO to resign over sloppy and possibly damning business practices. Ten months ago, the company was valued at $4.5 billion by investors.) Partly, such nervousness owes to employees, some of whom are getting laid off as companies cut back on costs in order to lengthen their runway. These former staffers have to exercise their options within 90 days or else lose them, and they’re calling secondary firms for help in figuring out what to do. Some sellers are venture capital firms that thought they could exit some of their investments in 2016 and are now concluding that they can’t. (As some readers will know, the clock is always ticking on a venture fund. Most have 10 or 11 years, tops, to invest in startups and get some cash back to investors before losing the confidence of those backers.)

• Why Carriers Want to Delete WhatsApp: Two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the Mobile World Congress, an annual industry gathering held in Barcelona, to reassure phone companies that Facebook is their natural ally. He’d just announced the $22 billion purchase of the WhatsApp messaging service and was touting an initiative called Internet.org, a low-bandwidth suite of basic services carriers would offer in conjunction with Facebook to get hundreds of millions of people online for the first time. He pledged to “build what is going to be a more profitable model with more subscribers for carriers.” By sticking together, the Facebook founder said, both sides could benefit handsomely.As Zuckerberg prepares to return to Barcelona for this year’s MWC on Feb. 22, phone executives say his company looks more like a competitor than a partner. Last year, WhatsApp introduced free voice calls—something Facebook already offered—and both brands have messaging apps. These so-called over-the-top services cut into mobile carriers’ voice and texting revenue because they’re offered over the Internet. Some phone companies say Facebook and its ilk are freeloaders that rely on carriers’ network infrastructure without spending any money to support it. “WhatsApp is competing with us, not only with messaging but with voice, too,” Telefónica Chief Operating Officer José María Álvarez-Pallete said in August at a telecommunications industry event in the Spanish coastal city of Santander. “The premise should be, same services, same rules.” Not all carriers are lining up against Facebook. The company has more than a dozen partnerships with phone companies from Paraguay to the Philippines. Many of them say teaming up with Facebook is beneficial, because it boosts data usage and has the potential to increase revenue. Millicom International Cellular, a carrier with more than 63 million subscribers in Africa and Latin America, has run promotions in certain markets where it offers free access to Facebook and Internet.org for a couple of months. The company reported last year that 33 percent of subscribers who take part end up upgrading to fee-paying data plans. Similarly, South Africa’s No. 3 mobile company, Cell C, offers Facebook and WhatsApp for free in certain subscription packages, because they draw new users. “If we don’t innovate around these services and drive value to our customers, we run a higher risk of being left out of the future entirely,” said Cell C Chief Executive Officer José Dos Santos in an e-mail. In the long run, say some industry analysts, WhatsApp and other alternatives shouldn’t be seen as a threat to the voice service of phone companies. The typically superior sound quality of the voice calls in the apps uses lots of data. “If carriers price their data offerings correctly, it could drive up revenues,” says John Delaney, an analyst at researcher IDC. And when people graduate to video apps like Skype, data consumption grows exponentially. Says Delaney, “What carriers resent is investing heavily and having others piggyback on their investments.”

• Scientists created a three-armed cyborg to play the drums like no human can: Georgia Tech researchers have built a robotic arm that attaches to a drummer’s shoulder and plays along. This allows drummers — now equipped with three arms — to play sequences that two-armed humans can’t even attempt. “It’s a richer and more sophisticated rhythm because you can hit one more thing,” said Gil Weinberg, director of the Center for Music Technology at Georgia Tech. The robotic arm is capable of hitting a drum up to 20 times per second, a rate that’s impossible for humans. And it never needs a break. The computerized arm listens to the sound of the human playing and improvises to accompany the beat. Currently it can’t be programmed to play specific songs. The robotic arm will generally mirror the volume and speed that the human is playing. Weinberg stopped short of saying the three-armed solution is presently better than what a drummer can do with two hands. The arm, finalized last week, hasn’t been tested yet to see how it complements professional drummers. Weinberg’s next step is having drummers wear a brain-scanning headband, and see whether the robotic arm can interpret their intentions and play exactly what they desire. Since 2006, he has worked to create memorable music through artificial intelligence. In one project, Weinberg built a robotic prosthesis for a drummer who lost an arm in an accident.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, August 5

Apple Denies Planning to Sell Mobile Services Directly to Consumers: Apple, the world’s most profitable mobile phone maker, has denied a report that it is working on a plan to market communications services directly to consumers that would bypass telecom operators on which it now relies. Business Insider on Monday reported that the iPhone maker was testing a so-called mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service in the United States, which would involve it renting capacity from one or more network operators to sign up its own customers. The mobile phone maker is also in talks with European operators about such an arrangement, the website reported. “We have not discussed nor do we have any plans to launch an MVNO,” said an Apple spokeswoman in a statement on Tuesday.

Facebook Mobile App Advertisers Won't Lose Their Device-Level Data After All As Social giant switches gears: Facebook said three months ago it planned to take away mobile app-install advertisers' ability to collect device-level data. But money talks, and ad-buying marketers evidently protested enough for the social media giant to reverse course. The Menlo Park, California-based company said in an email statement: "We advise our advertisers to apply people-based measurement solutions so they can determine when they're reaching multiple people, not just multiple devices. While we believe device-level reporting is not the most accurate way to properly determine advertising effectiveness, we want to provide advertisers with the choice to measure ads based on what is important to them. In order to provide that choice, we will continue giving advertisers the option to receive device-level reporting from our mobile measurement partners for mobile app ads." For nearly two years, Facebook has allowed app-install marketers to grab information that helped them determine—among other things—how their ads performed on devices such as iPhones, Samsung Galaxies and HTC Ones. Advertisers have to agree to keep that device-level data to themselves, as Facebook wants brands to focus on other metrics and is wary of privacy concerns. When Facebook revealed to marketers its plans to cut off such data while making them focus on campaign-based statistical results, they pushed back, according to a VentureBeat story last month.

Hackers Exploit ‘Flash’ Vulnerability in Yahoo Ads: For seven days, hackers used Yahoo’s ad network to send malicious bits of code to computers that visit Yahoo’s collection of heavily trafficked websites, the company said on Monday. The attack, which started on July 28, was the latest in a string that have exploited Internet advertising networks, which are designed to reach millions of people online. It also highlighted growing anxiety over a much-used graphics program called Adobe Flash, which has a history of security issues that have irked developers at Silicon Valley companies. “Right now, the bad guys are really enjoying this,” said Jérôme Segura, a security researcher at Malwarebytes, the security company that uncovered the attack. “Flash for them was a godsend.” The scheme, which Yahoo shut down on Monday, worked like this: A group of hackers bought ads across the Internet giant’s sports, news and finance sites. When a computer — in this case, one running Windows — visited a Yahoo site, it downloaded malware code. From there, the malware hunted for an out-of-date version of Adobe Flash, which it could use to commandeer the computer — either holding it for ransom until the hackers were paid off or discreetly directing its browser to websites that paid the hackers for traffic.

Crafts website operator Etsy's loss doubles; shares tumble: Crafts shopping website operator Etsy's quarterly loss doubled due to higher marketing expenses and the company said these costs would only increase in the current quarter. Etsy's shares fell more than 15 percent to $16.27 in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The company's marketing costs jumped 77 percent in the second quarter ended June 30 due in part due to higher spending on product listing ads. Total costs rose 49.3 percent. Etsy said it plans to spend more on marketing in absolute dollars in the third quarter than it did in the second quarter or the year-earlier quarter. It also said it expects to increase the pace of hiring in the current quarter compared with both the second quarter and the year-earlier quarter. The company said the strengthening dollar could hurt demand for dollar-denominated goods in the current quarter, which could slow the pace of growth of gross merchandise sales. Gross merchandise sales, a measure of total value of goods sold, rose 24.6 percent in the second quarter, driven by a 24.6 percent growth in active sellers and a 31.6 percent jump in active buyers on Etsy's website. Revenue rose 44.4 pct to $61.4 million in the quarter.

Apple's momentum 'meltdown' bites investors: Has the "curse of the Dow" finally caught up with Apple? Shares of the iPhone maker have been in a rut since posting disappointing quarterly results in late June, falling to a six-month low of $113.25 on Tuesday. The recent declines have wiped out nearly $100 billion of Apple's market value - about as much as fellow Dow components Boeing and McDonald's are worth in total. For CEO Tim Cook, it means his stake of more than 111 million shares is now worth about $12.76 billion, compared with nearly $15 billion at the peak in late April. The dropoff represents a notable bout of weakness for a stock basically impervious to pain for the better part of two years. Strategists pinned the sell-off on the steady run in the shares, as the stock has gained more than 137 percent since hitting a low in April of 2013. In addition, more than 5,700 different funds already own the shares, according to Morningstar data. With Tuesday's declines, the shares have dropped 13 percent over the last 11 trading days. "When you get a stock that is over-owned it’s difficult to find that incremental buyer," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities in New York. "It’s having its own momentum meltdown."

Apple Doing Own Cellular Service Doesn’t Make Sense, at Least Not Today: The appeal is tempting, of course. Apple would then fully own the relationship with the customer rather than leaving that job to one of the “orifices,” as Steve Jobs famously labeled the wireless providers. Google is in fact doing just this with its Google Fi effort, where it offers service starting at $20 per month using the networks of both Sprint and T-Mobile. But the service is fairly limited. It’s offered only on a single Nexus 6 phone and its designed to keep the service more of a test than a true national rival. It doesn’t make sense for Apple for a number of reasons. First it has a tough time doing things small — Apple currently represents a huge part of the carriers’ business, and some of the carriers’ most lucrative customers are its iPhone owners. So the carriers aren’t going to be eager to hand that over to Apple. Even if Apple could convince them to do so, it might not be in Apple’s long-term interest. First of all, consumers today are benefitting from four carriers heavily competing against one another, with a resurgent T-Mobile and an increasingly desperate Sprint both putting price pressure on AT&T and Verizon. Also, carriers spend a fortune to keep their networks strong enough to handle increasing demands and to swiftly upgrade to faster technologies. If they become truly a dumb pipe just selling gigabytes to Apple, the incentive to differentiate on customer service or speed is reduced, as would be the amount of capital they would have to invest. Over time, that could mean both Apple and consumers would lose. Plus, if it is Apple’s name attached to the service, it would have to take on the role of customer support and the perceived blame when the service doesn’t meet customer expectations. “That’s a lot to bite off, and I can’t see Apple wanting to do it,” said Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson. Now, that doesn’t mean Apple isn’t interested in seeing more value come to it over time. With iMessage, for example, Apple took something that consumers value — their text messages — and made it a feature of their phone rather than something tied to their carrier and phone number. There are reports Apple would like to do the same thing with voicemail. Apple also introduced on the latest iPads a SIM card that works across different cellular networks so customers don’t have to choose a carrier when choosing a device. Apple could do something similar with the next iPhone. These moves make sense. Whether Apple has dreams of eventually offering cell service or not, it is to their advantage that consumers are more tied to their iPhone than they are to being a customer of AT & T or T-Mobile. Do such moves also open the door to Apple offering its own cell service some day? Sure. And it would be foolish for Apple not to constantly consider whether such a move makes sense. But, at least for now, the downsides likely outweigh the benefits.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday March 3

• Consolidation in the colocation business: NTT buys German data center operator, while Rackspace seeks tie-ups with Amazon, Microsoft: NTT: Japan's NTT Communications Corp said on Tuesday it has agreed to buy German data center firm e-shelter, becoming Europe's third biggest operator in the sector, in the latest in a series of overseas acquisitions to counter sluggish growth at home. NTT Communications, an unlisted division of Japanese telecom firm Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) (9432.T) didn't disclose the deal's financial terms. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month the NTT unit was in talks to buy e-shelter for about 100 billion yen ($832 million). In a joint statement, NTT Communications and e-shelter said the Japanese firm will acquire 86.7 percent of the German company, founded in 2000. Operating data centers in four major cities in Germany including Berlin, as well as in Zurich and Vienna, e-shelter is Germany's biggest provider of data center services, they said. The European deal stretches the NTT brand further across the globe. In 2010, parent NTT bought South Africa's Dimension Data for 382 billion yen, while in 2013 NTT Communications signed deals with a combined value of 85.5 billion yen to take over two U.S. cloud computing firms, Virtela Technology Services and RagingWire Data Centers. Rackspace Rackspace Hosting Inc. is open to forging partnerships with large cloud-computing operators such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as the company seeks to bolster slowing revenue growth. Rackspace, which has faced price cuts by Amazon, Microsoft and other competitors, decided in September to reject approaches by multiple groups interested in a partnership or acquisition. Since then, Rhodes hinted that the company has had a team looking at supporting customers who are renting computing services from other providers. Rhodes confirmed on Monday that Rackspace intends to provide third-party support for users of rival cloud-computing services via a combination of people and custom-management software. “There are future versions of our model that will be more capital light and more service oriented,” Rhodes said.

• Dating app Tinder launches slew of product features, dynamic pricing: Tinder’s “Rewind” functionality just went live, finally giving users the ability to go back in time and swipe right instead of left. The “Rewind” feature is included in the premium tier of the service, Tinder Plus, which was unveiled today and costs anywhere between $9.99 and $19.99 in the United States, depending on the age of the user. That’s right. Tinder Plus costs $19.99 for users older than 30, while it costs just $9.99 for folks who are younger than 30. However, in the TechCrunch office we’ve seen Tinder Plus offered at the price of $14.99/month for a 30+ female user. We’ve reached out to Tinder to get a clearer picture of the Tinder Plus pricing structure and will update as soon as we know more. For now, however, we do know that pricing not only ranges based on age but by location. Users in emerging countries (Tinder is currently available in 140 countries across the globe) will pay as little as $2.99/month, while users older than 28 in developed markets like the UK will be paying approximately $23/month (and nearly 4x as much as their over 28-year-old counterparts). Tinder has been testing pricing in various markets for the past few months, but even without the complete information, it’s easy to get an idea of the general landscape here. Older users, who theoretically have less supply and offer less demand, should pay a greater amount for extra dating tools. Plus, they likely make more money than younger users. It’s Uber’s Surge pricing model applied to romantic endeavors. Tinder Plus also includes Passport, which allows users to search for matches anywhere in the world through the drop of a pin, as opposed to being locked into your current location. Tinder Plus also allows users to buy themselves out of advertisements, though Tinder has yet to launch any ad products just yet. Sources say that the ad product will launch later this month, but it’s unclear what exactly those ads will look like. As for the features launching today, they make a lot of sense given the current user behavior on Tinder. Rewind, in particular, appeals to just about anyone who has swiped left when they meant to swipe right. The company has seen over 6 billion matches in total, though it’s hard to say how many of those matches become anything. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for Tinder. The point is that it has become an addiction, with people mindlessly flipping through potential suitors and swiping based on a gut reaction.

• India’s Mobile Carriers Head Into $14 Billion Fight for Survival: What happens when a wireless operator with millions of customers loses the airwaves it needs to provide service? We may soon find out thanks to an unusual government auction taking place in India. The government will open the bidding Wednesday for airwaves already in use by the biggest carriers, including Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Vodafone Group Plc. They’ll have to compete to keep their licenses in the auction against Mukesh Ambani, who is India’s richest man and has signaled his determination by making the largest deposit of the competition. India’s approach, which is unlike what happens in the U.S., could mean seismic change for the world’s second-largest smartphone market. The airwaves up for auction serve more than 300 million customers and account for almost half of the $19 billion in combined revenue for the four largest operators. “For some of the telcos, renewal of spectrum is a key for survival,” said Nitin Soni, a director at Fitch Ratings in Singapore. Bharti, India’s biggest carrier, and second-ranked Vodafone could each spend as much as $4.5 billion for the spectrum, Soni said. Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. submitted a 45 billion-rupee ($726 million) bank guarantee, the most of any carrier, to participate in the auction, according to data from Mjunction Services Ltd., which is running the sale. Bharti Airtel was second with 43 billion rupees, and Vodafone gave a guarantee of 37 billion rupees. Any company losing previously held airwaves will probably have to shut down business in that region and abandon any investments or infrastructure it’s made. Companies also will lose revenue if they can’t switch to other bands, a move that would probably require new towers or technology. If companies shut down their business in a particular circle, their subscribers will have to look for new cellular operators, said Rishi Tejpal, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in New Delhi. “For some operators, it’s a do-or-die situation,” Tejpal said. “And with Reliance Jio in the picture, nobody knows their strategy.”

• It’s official #1: Google says it wants to offer cellular service: A top Google exec has confirmed what many have been speculating for months: That the search giant wants to start offering wireless service. Google isn't necessarily looking to become the next Verizon and AT&T, said Sundar Pichai, Google's head of Android, at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. But, according to various news reports, Pichai said we'll begin to see more details trickle out in the next few months as Google announces partnerships with wireless carriers and other businesses. Analysts say Google is likely to partner with firms such as T-Mobile and Sprint rather than build its own network from scratch. Asked whether Google's aim was to drive wireless prices down for consumers, Pichai responded that the experiment's goal is to showcase new mobile innovations, according to the Verge. An example: Technology that can automatically reconnect dropped calls. But by adding wireless service to its very long chain of mobile offerings, Google would be showcasing something nobody else has tried: A totally unified cellular experience that's entirely within the Google ecosystem. Google already sells a combination of hardware and software with its line of Nexus phones. Now, Google's wireless service — combined with a Google handset, the Android operating system, the Google app store and Google's own mapping, search and e-mail apps — stands to create a formidable vertical silo that goes far beyond the Nexus experiment.

• Its official #2: Olacabs acquires TaxiForSure for $200M in cash and stock: Online cab booking service Olacabs.com run by Mumbai-based ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, has acquired Bangalore-based Serendipity Infolabs Pvt Ltd, which runs rival service TaxiForSure for $200 million (Rs 1,240 crore) in a cash and stock deal, as per a company statement. The breakup of the cash component of the deal could not be immediately ascertained but with the stock swap, TaxiForSure investors—Accel Partners, Helion Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Blume Ventures would get small minority equity stakes in Ola. Ola’s backers include SoftBank, Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital and Steadview Capital. Ola is already the top player in its business and TaxiForSure is believed to be among the other large firms in its space. Both are locked in a pitched battle against global giant Uber and other local players such as hybrid venture Meru. The company said TaxiForSure will continue to operate as a separate entity, at least for now, with Arvind Singhal (currently COO) being appointed CEO. Aprameya Radhakrishna and Raghunandan G, co-founders of TaxiForSure, will contribute in an advisory role for a certain period. This is the second largest deal in the consumer internet/e-commerce business behind Flipkart’s acquisition of Myntra last year. That deal was reportedly worth over $300 million. TaxiForSure is currently present in 47 cities with over 15,000 vehicles registered on its platform. Ola said the deal compliments the two companies, as TaxiForSure follows a different model of supply and distribution by working with cab operators compared to Ola’s model of working with drivers who own their own cabs.

• Alibaba and top Chinese university launch new education portal for MOOCs: One of China’s most highly regarded universities has partnered with the country’s biggest ecommerce company to create a new website for massive open online courses, or MOOCs. The generically named Chinese MOOCs was just launched by Peking University and Alibaba as schools around the country begin their new semesters following the Chinese New Year holiday (h/t to TechNode). Chinese MOOCs lists 26 courses, covering subjects in science, law, literature, music, and IT. The website lists six other universities that are apparently on board, including the University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, and Beijing Normal, but all the courses currently offered are from Peking University (note: Peking University is also known as Beijing University, or Beida, for short). Using a model similar to Coursera, Chinese MOOCs combines video lectures, quizzes, and other coursework to educate students, who can take courses for free and opt to pay for certificates upon completion. There’s no limit to the number of students per course.

• U.S. millennials post ‘abysmal’ scores in tech skills test, lag behind foreign peers: The test is called the PIAAC test. It was developed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, better known as the OECD. The test was meant to assess adult skill levels. It was administered worldwide to people ages 16 to 65. The results came out two years ago and barely caused a ripple. But recently ETS went back and delved into the data to look at how millennials did as a group. After all, they’re the future – and, in America, they're poised to claim the title of largest generation from the baby boomers. U.S. millennials, defined as people 16 to 34 years old, were supposed to be different. They’re digital natives. They get it. High achievement is part of their makeup. But the ETS study found signs of trouble, with its authors warning that the nation was at a crossroads: “We can decide to accept the current levels of mediocrity and inequality or we can decide to address the skills challenge head on.” The challenge is that, in literacy, U.S. millennials scored higher than only three countries. In math, Americans ranked last. In technical problem-saving, they were second from the bottom. But surely America’s brightest were on top? Nope. U.S. millennials with master’s degrees and doctorates did better than their peers in only three countries, Ireland, Poland and Spain. Those in Finland, Sweden and Japan seemed to be on a different planet Top-scoring U.S. millennials – the 90th percentile on the PIAAC test – were at the bottom internationally, ranking higher only than their peers in Spain. The bottom percentile (10th percentile) also lagged behind their peers. And the gap between America’s best and worst was greater than the gap in 14 other countries. This, the study authors said, signaled America’s high degree of inequality. The study called into question America’s educational credentialing system. While few American test-takers lacked a high school degree, the United States didn’t perform any better than countries with relatively high rates of failing to finish high school. And our college graduates didn’t perform well, either. “Abysmal,” noted ETS researcher Madeline Goodman. “There was just no place where we performed well.”

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday March 2

• On display at Mobile World Congress: an uneasy relationship between tech and telecom: Despite the numerous networking events and business deals, there is a love-hate relationship involving some of the world’s largest mobile carriers and tech giants like Facebook and Google. Both sides rely on each other to provide customers worldwide with high-speed Internet access and online services like music streaming and social networking. Yet as smartphones increasingly become the principal means by which people manage their everyday lives, the telecom and tech giants are jockeying to position themselves as consumers’ main conduit for using the Internet on mobile devices. “Mobile has become the heart of the Internet,” This shift has led to some uneasy relationships between telecom and tech companies. For many carriers, which have invested billions of dollars in recent years to upgrade their networks, growing consumer appetite for services like streaming from Netflix has raised fears that telecom operators will be relegated merely to providing the infrastructure that powers the boom in mobile Internet. Telecom executives worry that this role will force operators to miss out on the growing revenue that flows into smartphone applications, Internet gaming and other services, which all run on top of their networks. The concerns come as many carriers’ revenues — particularly in Europe, whose economy continues to stutter — have leveled off. Some industry insiders also have expressed frustration that American tech giants like Google and Amazon, which have used complicated tax structures to reduce their global tax burdens, do not face the same levels of regulatory scrutiny as carriers. That includes the F.C.C.’s net neutrality decision last week, which will allow the agency to treat broadband Internet access as a public utility for regulatory purposes. At the same time, several tech giants have gained footholds in areas traditionally dominated by the big telecom companies. Google, for example, is introducing fiber-optic networks in several American cities, offering television and Internet services at speeds of up to one gigabit a second, 100 times as fast as the average Internet connection. The search giant is running other pilot projects in emerging markets, including Kampala, Uganda, to build Internet infrastructure not offered by local carriers. And Facebook now competes head-on with traditional telecom players after acquiring WhatsApp, the Internet messaging service, last year for $19 billion. Along with Facebook Messenger, the company’s separate messaging service, Facebook now has hundreds of millions of mobile users who have shifted from traditional text messaging — a once highly lucrative revenue source for carriers — to free Internet messaging on their mobile devices. “Operators only have themselves to blame,” said Steven Hartley, a telecom analyst at the research company Ovum in London. “They didn’t adapt to the mobile shifts in the industry. They can’t complain when others beat them to the punch.”

• IRCTC ties up with Amazon to monetize traffic by selling products online: Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of the government controlled Indian Railways, has now tied up with Amazon to sell products online. Last year Techcircle.in had reported that IRCTC was in talks with Amazon and Flipkart for a tie-up. In his previous conversation with Techcircle.in, a senior railway official had told that this move will leverage the site’s huge database of over 21 million registered users and convert them into potential customers for third party e-commerce players and in turn act as an additional source of revenue through a fee or other mechanism for IRCTC. IRCTC handles the catering, tourism and online ticketing operations of the Indian Railways. It is the sole seller of railway tickets even though other OTAs come across as additional sales channel for booking in association with IRCTC. Under the agreement, IRCTC will leverage the huge traffic it generates being a virtual monopoly for train e-ticketing to sell products such as consumer electronic, books, shoes, apparel etc. It has added a “shop on Amazon” tab on its homepage which redirects to a separate landing page on Amazon.in.

• Airbnb looking to raise $1B at $20B valuation: Airbnb Inc. is raising money from investors in a financing round that would value the room-sharing service at $20 billion or more, people with knowledge of the deal said. Airbnb may bring in about $1 billion in the funding, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The closely held company, backed by venture-capital firms including Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Founders Fund, was given a value of $10 billion last year in a round led by TPG Capital Management. Airbnb has raised more than $700 million before the latest financing. At $20 billion, San Francisco-based Airbnb would join the ranks of the most highly valued private U.S. technology companies, including Uber Technologies Inc., Space Exploration Technologies Inc., Snapchat Inc., Dropbox Inc. and Palantir Technologies Inc. It also would be worth almost seven times more than HomeAway Inc., a publicly traded vacation-rental site.

• Alibaba's direct-from-farm purchases, Baidu's smart chopsticks seek to reassure Chinese consumers amid food safety concerns: Controlling China’s sprawling food supply chain has proved a frustrating endeavor. Government regulators and state-owned agriculture companies have tried to tackle the problem in a number of ways — increasing factory inspections, conducting mass laboratory tests, enhancing enforcement procedures, even with prosecutions and executions — but food safety scandals still emerge too often. Chinese technology companies believe they can do it better. From the farm to the table, the country’s biggest players are looking to upgrade archaic systems with robust data collection, smartphone apps, online marketplaces and fancy gadgetry. The founder of the computer maker Lenovo started Joyvio, the agricultural company that tracks kiwis and other fruit from planting to delivery. The Internet giant Alibaba directly connects consumers with farmers via an online produce-delivery service. A gaming entrepreneur is running a pig farm on the side. And Baidu, the country’s leading search engine, is developing a “smart” chopstick that tests whether food is contaminated. City dwellers can buy directly from farmers through Jutudi, a pilot program created by Alibaba that has about 10,000 users. An e-commerce twist on the “buy local” movement, Jutudi lets users buy regular deliveries of vegetables and fruits from farms across China. Consumers can even pick their own plots in a sort of virtual farming, although deliveries may come from multiple places. Baidu’s smart chopsticks were supposed to be a joke for April Fools’ Day. The search engine giant published a fake advertisement for a set of chopsticks that would determine whether food had been cooked with gutter oil. The ad struck a chord, and it quickly went viral on Chinese social media sites. With such a strong response, Baidu decided to create a real product. Embedded with sensors, the chopsticks primarily test for gutter oil, but they also indicate pH levels and temperature. The product’s charger allows consumers to identify different fruits and vegetables as well as where they were grown and the calories they contain. The company is debating whether to add a feature that would indicate salinity, allowing users to determine whether mineral water is fake. Baidu is currently manufacturing a small batch of prototypes for testing. The company says it has not yet decided when to release the product or how much it will cost. Even so, it has already generated interest. Alibaba is tapping into consumers’ nostalgia for their rural roots with a heavy dose of marketing. The site features a Socialist Realist illustration of two women in a field of golden grain — harking back to the days of Mao Zedong, when farmers were lionized by propaganda. With images of shiny, red tomatoes, well-groomed pigs and other succulent fruits and vegetables, the program also promotes quality. Higher-end packages include tours of the farms.

• As Apple readies for smartwatch launch,..:For Apple, the hard part — making a smartwatch — is nearly over. Soon it will be time for the harder part: selling the long-anticipated Apple Watch to consumers who, so far, are not very excited about the idea of wearing computers on their bodies. The first batch of smartwatches from companies like Samsung Electronics, Motorola and LG did not sell well, nor were they particularly well reviewed. And wearable devices like the Google Glass eyewear that got mainstream attention — if not sales — were greeted with considerable skepticism. But Apple has been in this situation before. Most consumers didn’t care about computer tablets before Apple released the iPad, nor did they generally think about buying smartphones before the release of the iPhone. In both cases, the company overcame initial skepticism. Apple has marketed it as a device that can appeal to a range of customers like fitness buffs and luxury watch collectors. But it has limited its functions, making it more like a watch, more easily relatable than a tech doodad that happens to look like a watch, said Ben Bajarin, a consumer technology analyst for Creative Strategies. “This is a brand-new category. Most people have no frame of reference with a smartwatch,” said Mr. Bajarin. In late February, Apple sent out invitations to the media for an event to remind people about the best features of the watch and share some new details about the product, according to two people with knowledge of the event. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, is expected to be the host. Apple is expected to say more about price. The starting price for a basic Apple Watch is $350. Apple has not yet said how much people will have to pay for higher-end models, like the Apple Watch Edition, which is made of 18-karat gold, though watch enthusiasts estimate that it will cost upward of $10,000.

• ..Huawei unveils its own high-end smartwatch in an effort to beat Apple to the punch: China’s Huawei Technologies Co. unveiled its first smart watch that is aimed at the higher end of the wearables market, a week before Apple Inc. is expected to host an event to present a rival device. The 42-millimeter (1.6-inch) diameter luxury watch will be the world’s first wearable with sapphire crystal glass, Richard Yu, chief executive officer of Huawei’s consumer business group, said at an event in Barcelona Sunday, ahead of the Monday opening of the Mobile World Congress. Yu also unveiled an upgrade to Huawei’s smart band, introduced at last year’s conference. Huawei, ranked fifth in global smartphone shipments during the third quarter, is focusing on higher-end smartphones that can rival Apple’s or models by Samsung Electronics Co. All have expanded into wearables. Apple on Thursday sent out invitations to an event on March 9 in San Francisco, where it will unveil details for the release of the Apple Watch, a person with knowledge of the matter said. The connected, fitness-tracking wristwatch is the first entirely new gadget line to debut since Tim Cook took the helm at the Cupertino, California-based company. For Huawei, this year’s upgrade in accessories comes after sales of higher-end smartphones helped revenue rise about 20 percent in 2014 and operating profit improve. The maker of phone-network gear that also competes against the likes of Ericsson AB, has also been widening its product portfolio as it works toward a goal of achieving $70 billion in revenue by 2018, from $46 billion last year.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday February 17

• Wi-fi first telcos might be about to disrupt the telecom business: It would not be an insult to say Republic Wireless and FreedomPop are obscure little companies. But they dream big. The two companies are at the forefront of a tantalizing wireless communications concept that has proved hard to produce on a big scale: Reduce cellphone costs by relying on strategically placed Wi-Fi routers. And when there are no routers available, fall back on the traditional cellular network. They have been at this for nearly five years with mixed success. The companies say they are already profitable and gradually adding subscribers. But they are tiny — both say their customers are in the hundreds of thousands. Verizon Wireless, by comparison, has more than 100 million. Still, the upstarts have been trailblazers, proof that alternative wireless networks are feasible and maybe even profitable. Now some giant companies look to be following their lead. Last month, Cablevision announced a phone service that would be powered entirely by Wi-Fi, for $30 a month, while a traditional wireless contract costs around $100 a month. Google has also been working on a cellphone service that relies heavily on Wi-Fi, according to people briefed on the company’s plans. For consumers, all this could be very good news. The big American carriers — Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA — have not been worried about their Wi-Fi-powered competitors. But Cablevision and Google could force them to pay attention. And an industry already engaged in a price-cut war could be compelled to go even lower to keep the upstarts at bay. “Wi-Fi first is a massive disrupter to the current cost structure of the industry,” said Stephen Stokols, chief executive of FreedomPop. “That’s going to be a big shock to the carriers.” The concept championed by the two little companies in their nationwide services is surprisingly simple. The traditional wireless carriers operate their services with cell towers, but occasionally in areas with extra heavy traffic they resort to Wi-Fi to bear some of the load. FreedomPop and Republic Wireless do the opposite. They offer services that rely primarily on Wi-Fi networks, and in areas without Wi-Fi, customers can pull a signal from regular cell towers.

• Infosys acquires SaaS provider Panaya in deal valued at $200M: Consulting and IT services provider Infosys announced today that it will acquire Panaya, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software company. Worth an enterprise value of about $200 million, the deal is expected to close by the end of March.Infosys, which is based in Bengaluru, India, said that it will integrate technology from Panaya’s CloudQuality suite to bring automation to some of its software. CloudQuality helps businesses test changes to SAP, Oracle EBS, and Salesforce software by identifying functions that might break and providing potential solutions including code corrections. Infosys, one of India’s largest software exporters, is currently in the midst of revamping its strategy as it faces challenges including slower revenue growth than competitors like HCL Tech and TCS, and the departure of several key executives. Sikka told TechCrunch’s Ron Miller last July that he would take time to understand Infosys’ problems and that he believes software solutions should be about expanding the knowledge and capability of an organization. According to Crunchbase, Panaya has received $59 million in funding. Its last round, a Series E of $20 million, was disclosed in January.

• Ford and Tencent in talks to build messaging functions for Ford's cars in China: Ford said it was in talks with Tencent, maker of the popular WeChat messaging app, to develop messaging functions for the manufacturer’s cars in China. David Huang, a senior engineer who heads Ford’s Asia Pacific connected-services unit, said, “People want to stay connected, stay informed and stay entertained all the time, even when they’re driving.” Drivers would sync their phone to their car’s software system and control WeChat functions, chosen by Tencent and certified by Ford as safe, through voice commands or limited use of buttons. Yale Zhang, managing director of the Shanghai-based consultancy Automotive Foresight, said connectivity was a deciding factor for Chinese customers buying a car. “Those kind of things are the fundamental things people will consider,” he added. Many Chinese use WeChat’s free voice messaging feature instead of phone calls, holding up their smartphones like walkie-talkies as they speak, tap and listen to replies. Rivals including Daimler and Nissan are also looking at ways to give drivers safe, hands-free access to mobile apps in China, home to the world’s largest number of smartphone users. WeChat is China’s most prevalent chatting app, with about half a billion active monthly users.

• China’s internet restrictions are hurting business, survey finds:  Foreign businesspeople in China are increasingly frustrated by the growing obstacles to wide Internet access, including the onerous system of censorship known as the Great Firewall, according to survey results released this week by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. The survey was answered by 106 companies that are based in the European Union and have offices in China. Eighty-six percent of the respondents said their businesses had been negatively affected by the blocking of certain websites or tools. That was an increase from 71 percent in last year’s survey. The chamber also asked its members about the greater tightening of Internet access that occurred in China at the end of 2014 and this year. Eighty percent reported a worsening impact on business. Starting in late 2014, the Chinese government cut off access to Gmail from third-party apps, forcing people in China to rely on virtual private network, or V.P.N., software to get to Google’s email service. The regular Gmail site and other Google pages had been blocked consistently since last summer, but people in China had been able to use third-party apps to download Gmail to their devices until December. After blocking Gmail downloads through those apps, forcing more people to turn to VPN software, the government went on to aggressively attack V.P.N.’s. The chamber found that 13 percent of survey respondents had recently deferred investing more in research and development in China, or had been unwilling to set up those operations here, since restrictions grew at the beginning of the year.

• Russian cybersecurity firm alleges the US embeds super-sophisticated spyware in Iran, Pakistan, Russia and elsewhere: The United States has found a way to permanently embed surveillance and sabotage tools in computers and networks it has targeted in Iran, Russia, Pakistan, China, Afghanistan and other countries closely watched by American intelligence agencies, according to a Russian cybersecurity firm. In a presentation of its findings at a conference in Mexico on Monday, Kaspersky Lab, the Russian firm, said that the implants had been placed by what it called the “Equation Group,” which appears to be a veiled reference to the National Security Agency and its military counterpart, United States Cyber Command. It linked the techniques to those used in Stuxnet, the computer worm that disabled about 1,000 centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. It was later revealed that Stuxnet was part of a program code-named Olympic Games and run jointly by Israel and the United States. Kaspersky’s report said that Olympic Games had similarities to a much broader effort to infect computers well beyond those in Iran. It detected particularly high infection rates in computers in Iran, Pakistan and Russia, three countries whose nuclear programs the United States routinely monitors. Some of the implants burrow so deep into the computer systems, Kaspersky said, that they infect the “firmware,” the embedded software that preps the computer’s hardware before the operating system starts. It is beyond the reach of existing antivirus products and most security controls, Kaspersky reported, making it virtually impossible to wipe out. In many cases, it also allows the American intelligence agencies to grab the encryption keys off a machine, unnoticed, and unlock scrambled contents. Moreover, many of the tools are designed to run on computers that are disconnected from the Internet, which was the case in the computers controlling Iran’s nuclear enrichment plants.