Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, September 26

• Snapchat’s camcorder goggles are creepy cool and kind of brilliant: Snapchat’s first hardware product is a pair of $130 sunglasses that shoot first-person bursts of circular, wide-angle video. The Spectacles, as they’re called, are designed to make it easy to record what you’re actually seeing, in the moment, without having to awkwardly fish your giant smartphone out of your pocket and hold it in front of your face. The resulting recording is intended to be more lifelike, too.the last big camera-goggles launch, Google Glass, went about as poorly as possible. Glass, a too-serious attempt to put a computer on your face, looked ridiculous in a bad-taste, cyborg way. It introduced a creepy privacy violation — a face-mounted camera that you, as a bystander, couldn’t control — with poor explanation. Its early adopters, “Explorers” who spent $1,500 for the privilege, were derided as “Glassholes,” widely mocked, and sometimes abused. The whole thing came across as a poorly planned embarrassment. Spiegel is obviously trying to avoid these problems. Strategically, though, Spectacles are potentially brilliant. If Spectacles can intercept the smartphone camera and become the creative device that people use for any decent amount of recording — in what seems to be a proprietary format, with a custom-designed distribution network in Snapchat — that’s a pretty awesome position to be in.

• Snapchat, Known for Ephemera, Proves Its Staying Power With Videos: “Snapchat is the company that will figure out how to move TV viewers to mobile,” said Hemant Taneja, a Snapchat investor and managing director at the venture firm General Catalyst Partners. “YouTube and others have worked hard to bring video to mobile devices, but Snapchat is the first to crack how users behave on mobile.” Since introducing Discover in January 2015, Snapchat has become a web of highly edited video content — whether made by users, celebrities or media companies like Buzzfeed and CNN. That, in turn, has caught the attention of advertisers who want to reach Snapchat’s growing audience, which, the company says, includes 41 percent of Americans ages 18 to 34. By comparison, the company says that the average television network in the United States reaches about 6 percent of the same demographic. Now, Snapchat is preparing to deliver more original programming. Popular NBC shows including “Saturday Night Live” and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” have agreed to create programming for Snapchat, and “The Voice” ran a five-part series made just for the app. E News now has a weekly Snapchat-only pop-culture program called “The Rundown.” Television ad dollars would “flood into online” if online ads could prove they were as effective as television ads, said Joe Marchese, president of advertising products for the Fox Networks Group. For Mr. Marchese, that means the ad takes up the full screen, probably plays with the sound on and is viewed in its entirety. While advertisers do not go so far as to say that Snapchat video ads are equivalent to television ads, they note that watching content on Snapchat mimics, in some crucial ways, the experience of watching traditional television. Videos play with the sound on. They take up the full screen. They tell a narrative story. Users flip between them like they do TV channels.

• Marc Andreessen suddenly deletes all his tweets, goes on Twitter break: he Twittersphere was just a little bit quieter this morning after Marc Andreessen, father of the Tweetstorm, vacated the platform last night. While there’s no clear answer from him or others as to why he decided to take a break, Andreessen is not the first popular Silicon Valley figure to abruptly leave the service.Earlier this summer, Sam Altman, President of the Y Combinator Group, left citing community issues on the Twitter platform. He argued that the social network “rewards negativity and snark,” and that he felt “worse after using Twitter.” Of course, even Altman couldn’t resist the urge to come back to Twitter after a brief absence. Given Andreessen described his actions as a “break,” it will likely end much in the same way with an eventual return. Twitter as a platform has increasingly come under fire for its dismissive approach to the toxic culture permitting from some of the site’s insensitive and trolling users, though Andreessen isn’t usually one to back away from divisive conversations.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, September 23

• Facebook Says It Gave Advertisers Inflated Video Metrics: Facebook Inc. has been giving advertisers an inflated metric for the average time users spent watching a video, a measurement that may have helped boost marketer spending on one of Facebook’s most popular ad products. The company, owner of the world’s largest social network, only counts a video as "viewed" if it has been seen for more than 3 seconds. The metric it gave advertisers for their average video view time incorporated only the people who had watched the video long enough to count as a "view" in the first place, inflating the metric because it didn’t count anyone who didn’t watch, or watched for a shorter time. Facebook’s stock fell more than 1.5 percent in extended trading after the miscalculation was earlier reported in the Wall Street Journal. Facebook had disclosed the mistake in a posting on its advertiser help center web page several weeks ago. Big advertising buyers and marketers are upset about the inflated metric, and asked the company for more details, according to the report in the Journal, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. The Menlo Park, California-based company has kept revenue surging in part because of enthusiasm for its video ads, which advertisers compare in performance to those on Twitter, YouTube and around the web.

• Apple Inc. has acquired Indian machine-learning startup Tuplejump  as it seeks to expand its expertise in artificial intelligence. The iPhone maker bought the Hyderabad, India-based company in June, according to a person familiar with the deal who asked not to be identified. Tuplejump’s software specializes in processing and analyzing big sets of data quickly. The deal was reported earlier by TechCrunch. The purchase price wasn’t disclosed. Tuplejump has about a dozen employees, many of whom were already based on the west coast of the U.S., the person said. Founder Rohit Rai’s LinkedIn profile says he started working for Apple in May and is now also based in Seattle.

• Yahoo has confirmed a data breach with 500 million accounts stolen, as questions about disclosure to Verizon and users grow: Yahoo confirmed today that it had been subject of a massive hacking attack that exposed the data of at least 500 million users. Recode previously reported that Yahoo was about to reveal the breach and Yahoo had declined to comment when contacted last night. Now, the company is unveiling a situation much worse than expected, although the Recode report noted that it would be. Earlier this summer, Yahoo said it was investigating a data breach in which hackers claimed to have access to 200 million user accounts and one was selling them online. “It’s as bad as that,” said one source. “Worse, really.” The announcement has huge implications on Yahoo’s pending deal to be bought by Verizon for $4.8 billion. Sources at Verizon said they were largely unaware of the severity of the attack until recently and that CEO Marissa Mayer and others did not flag them as to the extent of the issue in the bidding process. You can read that ire clearly between the lines in a statement from Verizon-owned AOL, which is expected to be integrated with Yahoo when the deal is complete. "Within the last two days, we were notified of Yahoo's security incident. We understand that Yahoo is conducting an active investigation of this matter, but we otherwise have limited information and understanding of the impact. We will evaluate as the investigation continues through the lens of overall Verizon interests, including consumers, customers, shareholders and related communities. Until then, we are not in position to further comment." In addition, internal sources at Yahoo said the company had been subjected to a number of previous incidents that were not managed swiftly by CEO Marissa Mayer. One executive close to the situation said that former Yahoo information security head Alex Stamos had tried aggressively to get management to act more strongly at the time, but he had not been successful. The well-regarded techie left Yahoo in mid-2015 for a job as chief security officer at Facebook. This whole incident was first revealed in August when “Peace,” an infamous cybercriminal, advertised the sale of user credentials for some 200 million Yahoo users on the “dark web.” The data included user names, some passwords and personal information like birth dates and other email addresses. At the time, Yahoo said it was “aware of the claim,” but declined to say if it was legitimate. Instead, it opened an investigation, but did not issue a call for a password reset to users.

• Uber rival Grab partners with driverless car firm in Singapore: Users of ride-hailing firm Grab will be able to book driverless cars from Friday as it partners with a start-up testing the technology in Singapore, just days after rival Uber debuted its self-driving vehicles in the United States. The move comes as technology companies and automakers race to build autonomous vehicles and develop new business plans for what is expected to be a long-term makeover of personal transportation. Southeast Asia's Grab said its app will allow select commuters to book and ride start-up nuTonomy's driverless vehicles within a western Singapore district, where the vehicles are being tested, and adjacent neighborhoods. A safety driver and support engineer will ride in each nuTonomy car, the two companies said in a statement. nuTonomy, which started a limited public trial of the first driverless taxi in August in Singapore, has said it hopes to have 100 taxis working commercially in the city-state by 2018. Countries around the world are encouraging the development of autonomous technologies, and Singapore, with its limited land and workforce, is hoping driverless vehicles will encourage its residents to use more shared vehicles and public transport. Grab said its data showed drivers in Singapore are less likely to accept a passenger booking request originating from or destined for remote locations, highlighting the need for "robo-cars" that can meet transportation needs in far-flung areas. If a trip requires travel on roads outside of Singapore's one-north district, the safety driver will take control of the vehicle for that portion of the trip.

• LinkedIn is bringing Lynda.com courses to its news feed and building a messaging bot. LinkedIn is finally bringing Lynda.com — the online education company it bought 18 months ago for $1.5 billion — into its news feed. Beginning Thursday, LinkedIn will start recommending online courses for its members based on things like their jobs and their listed skills, and recommended courses shared by friends of colleagues. Users can take the course on LinkedIn, then add completed courses and new skills to their profiles after completion. CEO Jeff Weiner also teased out a number of upcoming products. Among them: A new LinkedIn messaging bot that will help LinkedIn users schedule and arrange meetings. The bot will pull info from users’ calendars to help find time for people to meet, then suggest physical meeting locations based on where the two people have met in the past. It’s the first such messaging bot from LinkedIn, which is not known for having an advanced messaging product. (It didn’t even announce a text-like messaging feature until a year ago.)

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, September 22

• Apple is reportedly in talks to buy automaker McLaren: The auto industry and the tech world may about to get a new power player: Apple is reportedly in talks to buy the high-performance car company McLaren, according to the Financial Times. The two firms have been talking for several months about plans to have Apple make a strategic investment in the McLaren Technology Group or buy it outright, the article said, citing "three people briefed on the negotiations." Many Apple watchers have advocated for Apple to buy Tesla, but Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has called such a deal "unlikely." Musk has also scorned Apple's car efforts, telling a German newspaper that he refers to Apple as "Tesla graveyard" because the tech firm hires so many engineers that Tesla has let go. But Apple could be very attractive for McLaren, which has struggled to reach profitability. The British carmaker may be best known for its very high-end luxury supercars and its Formula One team, though it also has made forays into wearable technology, health care and electronics. It took the name McLaren Technology Group in 2015 to reflect its diversification strategy. The focus on technology could represent a good culture alignment for Apple and McLaren, although  McLaren is a much smaller manufacturer than could serve Apple's massive customer base. The firm said at the time of its renaming that it produces just more than 1,600 cars per year.

• The Trade Desk finishes strong at $30.10 per share after its first day on NASDAQ: Things are looking up for adtech companies on Wall Street — or at least for one of them. The Trade Desk debuted on NASDAQ today at a price of $28.75 per share, up nearly 60 percent from its IPO price of $18. And while there wasn’t a dramatic pop, it continued to climb and closed the day at $30.10 per share. That’s a good start, particularly considering that adtech companies have struggled recently on the public markets, which has made venture capitalists wary of the industry, as well. Ventura, Calif.-headquartered The Trade Desk, which offers tools for ad buyers, was probably helped by its financials — the company is profitable, with 2015 revenue more than doubling year-over-year, to $113.8 million.Chief Client Officer Brian Stempeck also argued that The Trade Desk stands out because it has built real self-serve technology: “A lot of our people are engineers, building products, and when someone works in client services, they aren’t managing ad campaigns — they’re teaching others how to run the software.” Looking ahead, Stempeck said The Trade Desk will continue to expand internationally while also building more products for programmatic buying of TV ads. After all, he noted that while most ad dollars are going to TV, most TV advertisers don’t have a way to learn how many times they’ve shown someone the same ad. “Advertisers can actually show fewer ads, they can be better targeted, the publisher or content owner gets a higher rate because it’s so targeted, and it’s a better experience for the consumer” because they aren’t bombarded repeatedly with the same ad, Stempeck said.

• Google Shows Up Late in Crowded AI-Based Digital-Assistant Field: Google unleashed its digital assistant for the first time, arriving late to the intensifying race among the largest technology companies to create a more personal and lucrative way for computers to interact with humans. The Google Assistant uses artificial intelligence tools, such as voice recognition and natural-language processing, to answer questions and satisfy other requests delivered verbally and in formats such as text messages. The first incarnation is as a digital buddy inside Google’s new Allo messaging app, which the Alphabet Inc. unit unveiled Wednesday. The assistant will also appear inside Google’s Home internet-connected speaker -- expected next month -- in new Android smartphones and in devices such as cars and watches made by other companies, Google executive Nick Fox said. Google’s Assistant also performs tasks that get it into e-commerce territory, taking on Amazon’s Alexa. Users will be able to book a restaurant through the assistant and buy tickets to a game or event. Anything that involves getting things done more easily will be addressed over time, Fox said. Google has nothing planned on the advertising side yet, he added.Google didn’t give the system a name -- a contrast to Siri, Alexa and Cortana. That’s in part because Google designed its assistant to learn and evolve to be a different helper depending on the user. You can say, "My favorite sports team is the San Francisco Giants," and it will reply, "OK I will remember that." Later, when you ask, "What’s the latest score for my team?" it will send the score of the latest Giants baseball game, Fox said. Google is aware of the limits of its AI and is trying not to promise too much from the Assistant, at least early on. It won’t automatically insert information into chats between friends on Allo, but will occasionally appear to say it has suggestions and wait to be summoned. It will also stay away from value judgments or sensitive subjects such as violent and adult material. In those cases, it will apologize and say it can’t answer, or send web results from Google’s search engine.Google’s Assistant already knows its rivals. When asked if it is better than Alexa, the system responded diplomatically. "I like Alexa’s blue light. Her voice is nice too."

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, September 21

• Researchers remotely hack Tesla Model S: Chinese researchers announced Monday that they had discovered security vulnerabilities in the Tesla Model S that allowed them to take over the vehicle’s brakes and more without laying a finger on the car. While other researchers have hacked into Tesla vehicles, this appears to be the first time researchers were able to do so remotely — highlighting the security risks of the sophisticated software and online features now being built into vehicles. A video posted by the researchers from Tencent’s Keen Security Lab appears to show them controlling the vehicle's brakes, as well as manipulating its side mirrors, running the windshield wipers and popping the trunk while the car is in motion. The researchers were also able to manipulate some other features while the vehicle was parked, including opening the sunroof, controlling some of the vehicle’s lights and unlocking the doors, according to the video. In a blog post, the researchers wrote that they reported the vulnerabilities to Tesla, and the company confirmed the hack. The researchers only tested out their method on “multiple varieties of Tesla Model S,” but said that it’s “reasonable to assume that other Tesla models are affected." Tesla said in an emailed statement that it "deployed an over-the-air software update" to fix the problem within 10 days of being informed about the bug. The company said the vulnerabilities that Keen Security Lab uncovered would only be accessible under a very specific circumstance: when the vehicle’s Web browser was in use and the car was connected to a malicious WiFi hotspot. Tesla plans to reward the researchers under its bug bounty program, according to the statement. Tesla was the first automaker to roll out such a program, which offers cash rewards to independent researchers who help the company uncover problems in its software. The company pays up to $10,000 per bug.

• iPhone 7 Teardown Shows Margins Slimming on Storage, Displays: Apple Inc.’s iPhone margins have narrowed with the release of its latest smartphone line, the iPhone 7, with higher costs to provide greater storage options, a glossy black cover and more advanced displays, according to an analysis by IHS Inc. The component analysis firm estimates that the total manufacturing cost of an entry-level iPhone 7, a model with a 4.7-inch screen and 32 GB of storage, is $224.80. This compares with an updated IHS estimate of $200 for an entry-level iPhone 6S in 2015. IHS didn’t perform an analysis of the larger iPhone 7 Plus but said the costs are likely higher than last year’s iPhone 6S Plus due to the presence of additional components. Based on the IHS breakdown, the margins on the 4.7-inch iPhones have narrowed as Apple maintained the $649 starting price, but the company seems to have offset this by raising the price of the iPhone 7 Plus. The iPhone 7 Plus costs $769 for a model with 32 GB of storage compared with last year’s $749 entry-level price. Apple is also holding up its overall margins by reserving the more costly glossy black manufacturing process for the 128 GB and 256 GB models. While Apple hasn’t released sales numbers for the iPhone 7 line’s opening weekend, the company indicated its initial supply sold out. Despite early knocks against the device for its lack of a headphone jack, reviews have been positive and the company’s stock has gained 5.4 percent since the new phone was introduced about two weeks ago. The iPhone represented about 66 percent of Apple’s revenue last year, and the product’s unit sales, margins, and average-sales-price are critical to the company’s quarterly earnings results.

• Microsoft Plans Another $40 Billion Buyback, Boosts Dividend: Microsoft Corp.’s board authorized the buyback of an additional $40 billion of stock on top of an existing $40 billion repurchase program it will finish by year’s end, keeping up a strategy of returning money to shareholders as its cash pile grows. The Redmond, Washington-based software maker also raised its quarterly dividend by 8.3 percent to 39 cents a share, according to a statement Tuesday. The company’s stock has jumped 31 percent in the past year, giving Microsoft a market capitalization of $442.7 billion -- the third-largest in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has been working to jump-start revenue growth -- which analysts project will be 2 percent this fiscal year after a decline of 2 percent the previous year -- amid continued restructuring efforts related to the failed acquisition of Nokia Oyj’s phone business. Since Nadella took the helm in 2014, the company’s cloud and internet-based Office software businesses have fueled growth and boosted investor optimism. The stock this year has been hovering close to a 1999 record high.Microsoft shares rose about 1 percent in extended trading after the announcement. They slipped less than 1 percent to $56.81 at the close in New York.The company had $113.2 billion in cash and short-term investments as of June 30. Microsoft is spending about $26 billion to acquire LinkedIn Corp., a deal that will be largely funded by debt sales.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, September 20, 2016

• Facebook just bought a small hardware startup called Nascent Objects: Facebook has acquired Nascent Objects, a small Bay Area startup that offers what the company calls a “modular electronics platform” — essentially a software program to help expedite the process for building physical gadgets, including 3-D-printed hardware. Nascent Objects will join Facebook’s Building 8, the company’s new top-secret hardware lab run byformer Xoogler Regina Dugan, who used to run Google’s advanced technology and products team that did things like 3-D mapping and modular smartphones.he “modular” element is interesting. The idea of a modular smartphone where you can easily add or remove different components like a camera or battery or storage has been kicked around for a while now but has never taken off. It’s unclear what Facebook wants to build, but Nascent Objects specializes in modular gadgets. The other key seems to be expediting the time it takes to prototype hardware projects, which is also why Facebook recently built a new hardware lab on its Menlo Park, Calif., campus.

• Ride-hailing app Grab raises $750 million in funding led by SoftBank: Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab said it raised $750 million in a funding round led by investor SoftBank Group, adding that it would continue expanding in the region and also significantly invest in mobile payments capabilities. Southeast Asia is fast becoming a key battleground for ride-hailing firms thanks to a burgeoning middle class as well as a youthful, Internet-savvy demographic. Grab's announcement comes a few weeks after Uber sold its China operations to bigger domestic rival Didi and analysts have said Uber may focus its efforts and money elsewhere, such as in Southeast Asia.

• Twitter to lay off less than 20 employees at India center: source: Twitter Inc said on Monday it would lay off some employees and halt engineering work at one of its development centers in India's technology hub Bengaluru. The layoffs will impact less than 20 employees at the development center, according to a source familiar with the matter. The employees were part of ZipDial, an Indian mobile communications startup bought by Twitter last year, the source said."Over the past 18 months, we have incorporated the technology and talent of our ZipDial acquisition across our company," said a company spokesperson. Twitter said it remained committed to India as a strategic market and would continue to maintain a presence in the city. The company had 3,860 employees globally as of June 2016. However, it did not disclose the number of employees it had in India.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, September 19

• Why did Postmates hire Silicon Valley’s most famous bankers only to raise cash from its existing investors? Back in March, Recode reported that delivery startup Postmates had hired Qatalyst, the famed Silicon Valley investment bank known for helping internet companies find acquirers. But six months later, Postmates still hasn’t been sold. Instead, Postmates will likely raise an investment of at least $100 million, TechCrunch first reported and Recode has confirmed. What is weird, however, is where Postmates’ new money is coming from: Its existing investors, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, instead of a new investor Qatalyst was hired to find (if it was going to be an investment and not a sale). Huh? Let’s back up and replay this sequence of events to see if we can find the logic. First, Postmates hires Qatalyst to help it explore selling the company or raising money from new investors. Qatalyst bankers go out and talk to a bunch of would-be acquirers and would-be investors but don’t find a deal. So Postmates’ current investors decide to pony up a bunch of new money instead because, really, what is the alternative when you’re backing a fast-growing but money-losing company that you think may still have home-run potential? This means one of the following scenarios is true. Either A) Postmates thinks its business is more attractive than would-be acquirers or new investors do, or B) Qatalyst didn’t do its job well, or C) both of the above. 

• Rise, Fall, Redemption in Alibaba’s Two Years Since IPO:  Two years ago this month, the listing of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. set off a 36 percent surge that lifted the Chinese Internet company past Facebook Inc. by market value. The gains didn’t last and the stock went on to tumble through 2015 as sales growth slowed along with China’s economy. Revenue growth has accelerated this year, and so too have the shares, sending Alibaba ahead of Tencent Holdings by value.

• AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls: AngelList is preparing for winter. The company, which runs an online portal connecting entrepreneurs with private investors, is assembling a “rainy day” fund and exploring new businesses as the market for investing in young startups slows. Naval Ravikant, the chief executive officer and co-founder of the San Francisco startup, said he’s looking outside Silicon Valley to keep the money flowing in a downturn. He aims to secure commitments from sovereign-wealth funds, endowments and other investors around the world to invest $1 billion through AngelList in the coming years. Last year, China’s CSC Venture Capital, the U.S. arm of private-equity firm China Science & Merchants Investment Management Group, committed $400 million, he said. “If there’s a cash crunch and valuations come down drastically, then that’s when you want to be investing,” said Ravikant, a prolific seed investor who made early bets on Uber Technologies Inc. and Twitter Inc. “That’s what raising this institutional money is about. It’s our rainy day money.”  The rapid rise of AngelList coincided with a startup boom. The website has facilitated seed investments by mainly wealthy Americans in more than 1,000 startups, as well as funding for some later-stage companies, including Cruise Automation and Dollar Shave Club, which were each acquired this year. AngelList typically takes a 5 percent cut of the profit from each investment made through its platform, which it collects once a startup gets bought or goes public. It also plays the role of investor—through a $20 million fund, which it recently exhausted, and a newer $35 million fund.

• Want to Find Fulfillment at Last? Think Like a Designer: You’re going to learn how to find a fulfilling career. You’re going to learn how to better navigate life’s big-moment decisions and kill your “wicked problems” dead. How? By training yourself to think like a designer. That, anyway, is the premise of “Designing Your Life,” a class taught at Stanford University (the school’s “most popular class,” according to Fast Company magazine) as well as the just-published book that grew out of it, “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” (Knopf). The two men who created the class and wrote the book are Silicon Valley veterans, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. They believe they have hit upon a system to help you deal with almost any challenge. But everything else? The two professors claim that you can design an amazing life in the same way that Jonathan Ive designed the iPhone. They say the practices taught in the class and the book can help you (in designing-your-life-speak) “reframe” dysfunctional beliefs that surround life and career decisions and help you “wayfind” in a chaotic world through the adoption of such design tenets as bias-for-action, prototyping and team-building. After nine years of teaching their secrets to future Google product managers and start-up wunderkinds, Mr. Burnett and Mr. Evans are opening up the curriculum to everyone. “What do I want to be when I grow up?” and “Am I living a meaningful life?” aren’t only subjects for late-night pot-fueled dorm hangouts, the men said.The book includes things that are not in the class, like what Mr. Burnett and Mr. Evans call “anchor problems” — overcommitted life choices that keep people stuck and unhappy. A common mistake that people make, they said, is to assume that there’s only one right solution or optimal version of your life, and that if you choose wrong, you’ve blown it.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, September 10

• Jessica Alba’s Honest Company has been in talks to sell to a big consumer product giant: Honest Company, the diaper and personal care product company co-founded by the actress Jessica Alba, has been in talks to sell the company, several sources close to the situation said. Sources indicated that the buyer is likely to be a big consumer product company like Procter & Gamble or Unilever. As in all acquisition talks, the discussions may not result in a deal, and a potential acquisition price is not known. But Honest Company was most recently valued at around $1.7 billion when it raised $100 million in financing last year. The five-year-old company has raised $222 million in investments overall and brought in revenue of around $300 million in 2015, according to one source. The talks come as consumer-packaged goods companies are grappling with the increasing importance of e-commerce to their future and the challenge of competing in this new world without relying too heavily on sales through Amazon. Traditional retailers are facing similar challenges, as displayed by Walmart’s planned $3.3 billion purchase of Jet.com, a shopping site that’s only one year old. Along the way, the consumer packaged goods giants have become intrigued by startup brands like Dollar Shave Club and Honest that have built large followings by selling consumer goods directly to customers through their own websites and not through Amazon. In a surprise purchase, Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion earlier this summer.

• Facebook Becomes Emerging-Markets Play as User Base Shifts: With Facebook Inc.’s user growth in developing countries soaring, mutual funds focused on emerging economies are increasing investments in the Menlo Park, California-based company.Six years ago, 60 percent of the social platform’s 482 million monthly active users lived in the U.S., Canada and Europe and the rest were from elsewhere. Now two-thirds of its 1.7 billion users are from outside of the heart of the developing world. Researcher eMarketer estimates India will surpass the U.S. next year as the country with the most Facebook users. It also ranks India, Indonesia, Mexico and the Philippines as the top four countries to see the fastest Facebook user growth until 2020. “From a monetization perspective it’s still dominantly the U.S. but from a long-term opportunity perspective it’s definitely emerging-markets,” Charlie Wilson, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based managing director at Thornburg Investment Management Inc., said in an interview in New York. He has steadily added Facebook shares to the Thornburg Developing World Fund, and they now account for 3 percent of the $1.2 billion portfolio.

• Apple will not give first-weekend sales of iPhone 7, the company said on Thursday, making it harder for analysts to get a read on the product's prospects amid questions over whether its popularity has peaked. The company decided to stop the practice because the number of phones sold during the period has become more a reflection of Apple’s supply than demand, a company spokeswoman said, when asked whether Apple will be releasing the figure.The stakes for the iPhone 7 are high after sales of the gadget dropped during two straight quarters this year, the first declines in its history. As they try to assess whether the iPhone has reached a plateau, investors will not be happy about losing a data point, said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners. "Less data is never good, particularly given the question marks around this phone," he said. Apple shares fell 2.4 percent to $105.71 in mid-day trading.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, September 8

• What’s Really Missing From the New iPhone: Dazzle Forget about the headphone jack for a second. Sure, it’s pretty annoying that Apple’s newest iPhones — the 7 and 7 Plus, which were unveiled in San Francisco on Wednesday and will start shipping to customers on Sept. 16 — will not include a port for plugging in standard earbuds. But you’ll get used to it. The absence of a jack is far from the worst shortcoming in Apple’s latest product launch. Instead, it’s a symptom of a deeper issue with the new iPhones, part of a problem that afflicts much of the company’s product lineup: Apple’s aesthetics have grown stale. Apple has squandered its once-commanding lead in hardware and software design. Though the new iPhones include several new features, including water resistance and upgraded cameras, they look pretty much the same as the old ones. The new Apple Watch does too. And as competitors have borrowed and even begun to surpass Apple’s best designs, what was iconic about the company’s phones, computers, tablets and other products has come to seem generic. This is a subjective assessment, and it’s one that Apple rebuts.Yet there are signs that my critique of Apple’s designs are shared by others. Industrial designers and tech critics used to swoon over Apple’s latest hardware; nowadays you witness less swooning and more bemusement.And while Apple has slowed its design cadence, its rivals have sped up. Last year Samsung remade its lineup of Galaxy smartphones in a new glass-and-metal design that looked practically identical to the iPhone. Then it went further. Over the course of a few months, Samsung put out several design refinements, culminating in the Note 7, a big phone that has been universally praised by critics. With its curved sides and edge-to-edge display, the Note 7 pulls off a neat trick: Though it is physically smaller than Apple’s big phone, it actually has a larger screen. So thanks to clever design, you get more from a smaller thing — exactly the sort of advance we once looked to Apple for.

• Amazon Cuts Delivery Times in Threat to Alibaba, EBay, Wish.com: Amazon.com Inc. is speeding the delivery of USB cables, smartphone screen protectors, cosmetics and other small, flat items in its continuing push against rival marketplaces that help overseas manufacturers and suppliers sell directly to U.S. shoppers.  The Seattle-based company notified merchants Wednesday that such items would now be delivered to Amazon Prime members within five business days, down from eight previously, according to an e-mail obtained by Bloomberg. That makes Amazon delivery of small, inexpensive items from China, for example, much faster than the two weeks to 30 days it can take using marketplaces owned by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., EBay Inc. and Wish.com. Amazon wants quick delivery, which has helped it dominate online shopping in the U.S., to further differentiate itself from competitors in cross-border e-commerce. U.S. online shoppers will spend about $30 billion this year on cross-border transactions, a 10 percent increase from 2015, with China the leading source of goods purchased, according to a February report byEMarketer. 

• OfferUp raises $119 million for resale marketplace: It’s like Craigslist, but with auctions. OfferUp is an app that makes it easy to buy and sell your goods. The fast-growing Seattle-based company is raising $119 million to continue its global expansion and continue hiring. The round is led by Warburg Pincus and includes funding from GGV Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and T. Rowe Price. OfferUp users snap a photo of their used items like clothing and furniture and then check the app to sort through the highest bids. The built-in messaging feature also makes it easy to communicate with prospective buyers. Hans Tung from GGV Capital said that he invested in OfferUp because “Craigslist hasn’t innovated for a long time and there is unmet, pent up demand for classified on mobile.” He points out that OfferUp makes it easy to communicate with prospective buyers, without having to share one’s personal cell phone number. OfferUp launched just last year and already has 29 million installations in the U.S. They claim that their user engagement rivals Snapchats.I personally tried OfferUp last fall when I was selling items before a cross-country move. I was surprised to see how easy it was to find bidders for seemingly undesirable things, including my used trash can! OfferUp previously raised over $91 million in funding. 

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, September 7

• After a quiet summer, Twitter’s board will take a hard look at what comes next: Twitter’s quiet summer may soon be coming to an end. The social communication company’s board of directors is set to meet this Thursday in San Francisco, and there are plenty of things to discuss. That includes, said sources, its fate as a standalone company. That’s no surprise, since Twitter has been the subject of numerous takeover and acquisition rumors over the last few months, each one sending the stock up as investors hold out hope that Twitter will find a buyer. There are the big corporate names that might take another close look at Twitter, such as Google (there’s an unusual scenario one source mentioned in which it becomes part of some Alphabet media spinoff), Apple and even media mogul Rupert Murdoch, either via 21st Century Fox or News Corp. Other possible bidders include private equity firms that may want to take the company private, where it can solve some of its issues out of the public eye. But finding a buyer won’t be easy, given the Twitter’s estimated cost. Using the same multiple LinkedIn got from Microsoft in its recent $26 billion acquisition deal, a Twitter buyer would have to fork over about $18 billion. That’s a steep price tag for a company that has had persistent issues with growth and also one that is still losing money each quarter.

• Postmates is raising at least $100 million to fuel its on-demand ambitions: We’re hearing from sources that Postmates, which is among a few companies that are seen as operating in the difficult on-demand space, is raising at least $100 million in a round led by Founders Fund. Sources stressed that the round has not closed, and that things may change over time. Despite the challenges of working in an on-demand economy — which can sometimes lead to punishing gross margins and high operational costs — we’ve heard that Postmates is actually in okay shape. Some leaked financial documents earlier obtained by TechCrunch dated last year highlighted gross margins of around 20%. Postmates’ CEO Bastian Lehmann has said before that the company is on track to hit profitability in 2017 — which, at the time we reviewed the leaked documents, we also heard was on track.The company is operating in an area of steep competition with the likes of DoorDash, which recently raised $127 million in a down round. That moment was somewhat of a microcosm of the financing environment at the time: DoorDash sought a valuation of $1 billion, but inevitably had to settle for something lower. However, in Postmates’ situation, we hear that this round is not a down round. The company last raised $80 million at a round that valued it at nearly $500 million. Obviously this is good news for Postmates.

• A look at three players in the 3D printing world: Carbon is backed by notable investors, including Google, Autodesk and Sequoia Capital as the company managed to raise $141 million to date. Their debut printer, the M1, is priced at $40,000 per year with a minimum three-year term — a subscription-based model that is quite new to the 3D printing industry. After a decade’s worth of research and development, and $25 million in funding from Autodesk and Catalyst, XJet revealed its technology at RAPID 2016 in May. The company now has seven machines operating in its Rehovot, Israel HQ, but is yet to announce an official launch date and its first product. Once on the market, XJet could potentially disrupt the production of short-runs of complex metal parts in major areas of production.Offering an end-to-end solution for $155,000, HP’s machine is priced rather competitively. Currently there’s only one available material (nylon), but the company is planning to roll out more materials in the coming months, showing vast potential for future development.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, September 6

• How Uber Drivers Decide How Long to Work: For nearly 20 years, economists have been debating how cabdrivers decide when to call it a day. This may seem like a trivial question, but it is one that cuts to the heart of whether humans are fundamentally rational — in this case, whether they earn their incomes efficiently — as the discipline has traditionally assumed. In one camp is a group of so-called behavioral economists who have found evidence that many taxi drivers work longer hours on days when business is slow and shorter hours when business is brisk — the opposite of what economic rationality, to say nothing of common sense, would seem to dictate. So who is right? That’s where Uber comes in. When one of the company’s researchers, using its supremely detailed data on drivers’ work time and rides, waded into the debate with a paper this year, the results were intriguing. Over all, there was little evidence that drivers were driving less when they could make more per hour than usual. But that was not true for a large portion of new drivers. Many of these drivers appeared to have an income goal in mind and stopped when they were near it, causing them to knock off sooner when their hourly wage was high and to work longer when their wage was low.Whatever the case, the result seems to have one very obvious implication: Anyone trying to make it in the gig economy should probably pick a favorite platform or two and stick with them rather than constantly jump around from one type of gig to another.

• Goodbye, Ivory Tower. Hello, Silicon Valley Candy Store. Silicon Valley is turning to the dismal science in its never-ending quest to squeeze more money out of old markets and build new ones. In turn, the economists say they are eager to explore the digital world for fresh insights into timeless economic questions of pricing, incentives and behavior. “It’s an absolute candy store for economists,” Mr. Coles said. The pay, of course, is a lot better than you would find in academia, where economists typically earn $125,000 to $150,000 a year. In tech companies, pay for a Ph.D. economist will usually come in at more than $200,000 a year, the companies say. With bonuses and stock grants, compensation can easily double in a few years. Senior economists who manage teams can make even more. Businesses have been hiring economists for years. Usually, they are asked to study macroeconomic trends — topics like recessions and currency exchange rates — and help their employers deal with them. But what the tech economists are doing is different: Instead of thinking about national or global trends, they are studying the data trails of consumer behavior to help digital companies make smart decisions that strengthen their online marketplaces in areas like advertising, movies, music, travel and lodging. Tech outfits including giants like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoftand up-and-comers like Airbnb and Uber hope that sort of improved efficiency means more profit.

• Satellite owner says SpaceX owes $50 million or free flight: Israel's Space Communication Ltd said on Sunday it could seek $50 million or a free flight from Elon Musk's SpaceX after a Spacecom communications satellite was destroyed last week by an explosion at SpaceX's Florida launch site. Officials of the Israeli company said in a conference call with reporters Sunday that Spacecom also could collect $205 million from Israel Aerospace Industries, which built the AMOS-6 satellite. SpaceX said in an email to Reuters that it does not disclose contract or insurance terms. The company is not public, and it has not said what insurance it had for the rocket or to cover launch pad damages beyond what was required by the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial U.S. launches, for liability and damage to government property. SpaceX has more than 70 missions on its manifest, worth more than $10 billion, for commercial and government customers. The space launch company is one of three major transportation and energy enterprises Musk leads. The others are electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc and SolarCity Corp, and Musk faces separate challenges at each of those money losing companies. Spacecom has been hit hard in the aftermath of the Thursday explosion that destroyed the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its payload. The Israeli company said the loss of the satellite would have a significant impact, with its equity expected to decline by $30 million to $123 million. Spacecom shares dropped 9 percent on Thursday, with the explosion occurring late in the last trading day of the week.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, September 2

• SpaceX Rocket Explodes at Launchpad in Cape Canaveral - Destroying Facebook Satellite: A spectacular explosion of a SpaceX rocket on Thursday destroyed a $200 million communications satellite that would have extended Facebook’s reach across Africa, dealing a serious setback to Elon Musk, the billionaire who runs the rocket company. The blast is likely to disrupt NASA’s cargo deliveries to the International Space Station, exposing the risks of the agency’s growing reliance on private companies like SpaceX to carry materials and, soon, astronauts. The explosion, at Cape Canaveral, Fla., intensified questions about whether Mr. Musk is moving too quickly in his headlong investment in some of the biggest and most complex industries, not just space travel but carmakers and electric utilities. This is not the first problem Mr. Musk has suffered as he tries to create space travel that is cheap and commonplace. Each of his companies, including Tesla and SolarCity, has hit major stumbling blocks recently. Theowner of a Tesla car died in May in a crash using the company’s autopilot software, and SolarCity faces major financial challenges. The explosion was particularly painful news for Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who is touring Kenya, promoting a program reliant on the satellite, known as Amos-6, with entrepreneurs in the country. He had promised them connectivity. Just hours after the news of the explosion broke, Mr. Zuckerberg expressed disappointment on his Facebook page “that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite,” a swipe at Mr. Musk and his team, who were still trying to figure out what went wrong.

• Google shelves plan for phone with interchangeable parts - sources: Alphabet Inc’s Google has suspended Project Ara, its ambitious effort to build what is known as a modular smartphone with interchangeable components, as part of a broader push to streamline the company's hardware efforts, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The move marks an about-face for the tech company, which announced a host of partners for Project Ara at its developer conference in May and said it would ship a developer edition of the product this autumn. The company’s aim was to create a phone that users could customize on the fly with an extra battery, camera, speakers or other components.Axing Project Ara is one of the first steps in a campaign to unify Google’s various hardware efforts, which range from Chromebook laptops to Nexus phones. Former Motorola president Rick Osterloh rejoined Google earlier this year to oversee the effort. Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo Group in 2014.“This was a science experiment that failed, and they are moving on,” he said. Project Ara was one of the flagship efforts of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, which aims to develop new devices, but it had various stops and starts. Last year, the company shelved plans to sell the modular phone in Puerto Rico with Latin American carriers.

• When Things Go Very Wrong at a Start-Up: For many young engineers and business people, Silicon Valley is their version of Hollywood. If you want to make it big, go there, create your own company or sign on with a start-up on the way up, and get ready to make a fortune. Maybe you will even become famous. But Hollywood, it turns out, is not the only California destination with a boulevard of broken dreams. Last week, a Medium post about how things went south — badly — at an unnamed tech start-up drew attention to a side of Silicon Valley not many people talk about. For all the Googles and Facebooks and Oracles, there may be hundreds of companies that never make it. And in some cases, the employees who sign on may walk away poorer financially for their effort. As Katie Benner writes, it wasn’t long before online commenters figured out that the company in the Medium post was called WrkRiot. The unraveling of this company is, of course, a cautionary tale about the many things that can go wrong at a start-up, like questionable bosses and plain old bad ideas. Is it indicative of a larger problem in Silicon Valley? Industry veterans would probably say no. Some people view working for a dud of a start-up as a rite of passage — like a bad relationship that teaches you a lesson about what to avoid in a partner. Others figure that even if things go bad, there are so many good jobs in the area, you won’t be down on your luck for long. But just in case, do a little extra homework before you move across the country to take a start-up job.