Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, November 6

• Why Health Care Start-Ups Like Theranos Need Investing Expertise: The Silicon Valley start-ups that often grab headlines are typically in the Internet and consumer technology world. But there’s another part of start-up land that is also highly active: health-related technology, which includes biotech, health care services and medical devices. Venture capitalists have been pouring money into health-related start-ups, with funding jumping 34 percent to $9.4 billion in 2014 from a year earlier, according to the National Venture Capital Association. What’s often left unsaid about these companies is that they behave very differently from the typical consumer start-up or business software company. The health-related start-up sector has produced fewer unicorns, which are the private companies with $1 billion-plus valuations, largely because it takes a long time to develop new medical tests, drugs or insurance systems. Regulators often weigh in. Even if an idea behind a start-up is truly great, it’s bound to fail if the science doesn’t work out, if the regulators don’t like what they see, or if insurers and the government won’t pay for the product.

• The High Price of Delivery App Convenience: When Emily Yang, a San Francisco tech worker, is running out of cat food, she taps an app called Instacart to order a new bag of kibble to be delivered to her door within hours. For dinner, she often orders through Sprig and Munchery, app-powered services that bring fresh organic meals to her home. Her experience highlights how a proliferation of instant-delivery apps has turned the smartphone into a sort of magic remote control that can almost beam items straight to your door: a burrito, a tennis racket, even a week’s worth of groceries. There are now so many of these apps, especially serving cities like San Francisco and New York, that you can tap an app even to do your laundry or mail packages. But instant gratification has a price. With the delivery apps, tech companies act as a middleman connecting merchants and couriers with customers, and they pass the service charges on to the consumer. The fees are also more obfuscated and complex than you might expect when you, say, order a pizza. The receipt for the pie would clearly state its cost and the delivery fee.

• People doing ‘crazy things’ with Tesla’s autopilot are spoiling it for everybody: Tesla chief executive Elon Musk is warning that some new limits may be coming to the company's autopilot feature because of "some fairly crazy videos on YouTube" showing drivers behaving dangerously while the car is in control. Tesla doesn't recommend taking your hands off the wheel while the car is in autopilot mode. Yet that's exactly what some people are doing, leading to things like near-misses with other vehicles:Even the New York Times' video review made a big deal out of being able to drive hands-free. "This is not good," Musk said on an earnings call this week. "We'll put on some constraints on autopilot to minimize people doing crazy things with it." Musk didn't elaborate on what kinds of new restrictions autopilot users could soon face, though it's likely that they would show up in the form of another software update.

• In a first, the FCC is fining a major cable company for getting hacked: In the first such case against a U.S. cable company, federal regulators are slapping Cox Communications with a $595,000 fine after Cox allowed hackers from Lizard Squad to penetrate its systems and steal private customer information. By posing as an IT administrator and tricking a couple of Cox employees into giving up their login credentials, a hacker known as "EvilJordie" broke into Cox's databases and gained access to customer names, addresses, password recovery information and even "partial" Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers, according to the Federal Communications Commission. They also got hold of some customers' telephone records. As many as 61 current or former Cox customers were affected by the breach, which occurred between Aug. 7 and Aug. 14 of 2014. The hackers changed 28 of these customers' passwords, locking them out of their own accounts, and posted eight people's personal information on social media.

• YouTube to support virtual reality video on its app: The Youtube app now supports VR video - a format that gives viewers what the company says are more realistic 360-degree perspectives of films. To view it, a user would call up a virtual reality video on the YouTube app, click a button on the video for VR mode, and place the phone in Alphabet Inc's "Cardboard" device, a handheld gadget made from the standard box material that creates a VR viewing experience. Makers of virtual reality content can upload VR videos compatible with the Cardboard viewer directly to YouTube. YouTube said there are about a dozen VR videos, including one stemming from the "Hunger Games" movies.

• Add a Fund to Amazon Cart? You Have Indian Regulator's Support: Indians are estimated to spend about $9 billion this year shopping online for everything from smartphones to cupcakes. The nation’s stock market regulator wants them to add another product to their shopping cart: mutual funds. The Securities & Exchange Board of India plans to change its regulations to allow online marketplaces such as Flipkart Online Services Pvt. and Amazon.com Inc. to offer funds alongside other products, Chairman U.K. Sinha said in an interview at his office in Mumbai. Mutual funds have gained popularity among Indian savers, receiving more money in the past 17 months than they did in the preceding 12 years. Yet just 3 percent of the nation’s 1.2 billion people invest in them, with majority preferring bank deposits or gold, according to the Association of Mutual Funds in India. Allowing e-commerce sites to sell funds will help money managers reach out to young investors accustomed to shopping online, providing the industry with a new distribution channel, Sinha said.

• In India, Tiny Owl Founder Reportedly Detained for Two Days By Laid-Off Employees — and the Police: Well that was strange — and scary. Hours ago, one of six cofounders of Tiny Owl, a two-year-old, Mumbai, India-based food ordering software startup, was released after being held captive for two days by disgruntled former employees at the company’s office in Pune. Tiny Owl had earlier this week announced $7.67 million in fresh funding from earlier backers Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital. But the funding came with the understanding that Tiny Owl would follow through on a major restructuring to control its burn rate.As part of that restructuring plan, the company is shutting down its operations in four cities, including Pune. Which leads us to what happened to company cofounder Gaurav Choudhary. Choudhary had traveled to Pune earlier this week to oversee the office’s closure, while his fellow cofounders – all of whom are graduates of IIT Bombay — traveled to sites in Gurgaon, Chennai and Hyderabad to do the same. But according to various media accounts, soon after Choudhary informed Tiny Owl’s Pune-based employees of the layoffs, he was asked to pay them immediately. When he said he couldn’t, they reportedly refused to let him leave the building and return to Mumbai.