Spending a day at a national park can be an exciting adventure. Reconnecting with nature is always a good time, but nearly 200 visitors to California's Yosemite National Park may have gotten a little more than they bargained for. Health officials are now investigating upwards of 170 suspected cases of norovirus linked to visitors returning from Yosemite.

As NBC News reports, the vast majority of the individuals reporting norovirus-like symptoms sprung up in early January. The number of cases has steadily decreased in the days since, but as the virus is highly contagious, it's still a potentially troubling matter.

Continue reading...

BGR Top Deals:

1. Uh, this could be a mistake because 65″ 4K Roku TVs aren’t supposed to cost just $450
2. Today’s best deals: Rare 4K Roku TV blowout, $16 Wi-Fi extender, $8 wireless charger, $5 Alexa smart plugs, more

Trending Right Now:

1. PS5 leaker might have revealed the price of the Xbox Series X as well
2. Sony’s going to be so mad that one of its hottest new PS5 features already leaked
3. There’s a brilliant way for Iron Man to return to the Avengers without ruining ‘Endgame’

Possible norovirus outbreak linked to Yosemite National Park originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 18:02:02 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Stop whatever you're doing right now, because there's a deal that you absolutely have to take advantage of before it disappears. Amazon sells 35-ounce bags of SNICKERS Variety Mix Fun Size Candy Bars for $9, which is already a crazy value. Think about it... that's more than 2 lbs of Snickers, and it's a variety bag with all four of the best flavors. Well, if you thought that was a great deal then you're in for a treat, because there's a limited-time 20% coupon that slashes the price to only $7.18!

SNICKERS Variety Mix Fun Size Candy Bars, Great for Valentine's Chocolate, 35.09-Ounce: $7.18

Here's more from the Amazon page:

• Contains one (1) 35.09 ounce bag of SNICKERS Fun Size Chocolate Candy Bars Variety Mix Bag
• This variety mix contains fun sized SNICKERS Original, SNICKERS Peanut Butter and SNICKERS Almond and SNICKERS Crisper Chocolate Bars
• Fun size candy bars are ideal for holiday parties, the office, for Halloween, or birthday parties
• This chocolate variety mix is packaged in a stand up bag that you can place at the center of any party to share
• Share an assortment of SNICKERS Fun Size Candy Bars with friends, family and the office

SNICKERS Variety Mix Fun Size Candy Bars, Great for Valentine's Chocolate, 35.09-Ounce: $7.18

BGR Top Deals:

1. Uh, this could be a mistake because 65″ 4K Roku TVs aren’t supposed to cost just $450
2. Today’s best deals: Rare 4K Roku TV blowout, $16 Wi-Fi extender, $8 wireless charger, $5 Alexa smart plugs, more

Trending Right Now:

1. Sony’s going to be so mad that one of its hottest new PS5 features already leaked
2. PS5 leaker might have revealed the price of the Xbox Series X as well
3. There’s a brilliant way for Iron Man to return to the Avengers without ruining ‘Endgame’

Get over 2 lbs of mini Snickers bars for $7.18 originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 17:31:54 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We're still anxiously awaiting any official news from Sony about the reveal of the PlayStation 5, but in the meantime, there have been plenty of leaks to keep us occupied. Several of those leaks have revolved around the controller that will ship with the new console -- expected to be dubbed the DualShock 5 -- but the latest actually comes from Sony itself. It appears that for a short time, on a page that explained the differences between the PS4 and PS4 Pro, the PlayStation France website included the DualShock 5 on its list of compatible controllers.

Continue reading...

BGR Top Deals:

1. Uh, this could be a mistake because 65″ 4K Roku TVs aren’t supposed to cost just $450
2. Today’s best deals: Rare 4K Roku TV blowout, $16 Wi-Fi extender, $8 wireless charger, $5 Alexa smart plugs, more

Trending Right Now:

1. Sony’s going to be so mad that one of its hottest new PS5 features already leaked
2. PS5 leaker might have revealed the price of the Xbox Series X as well
3. There’s a brilliant way for Iron Man to return to the Avengers without ruining ‘Endgame’

Leak shows the PS5 controller will be backwards compatible with the PS4 originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 17:00:30 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple's AirPods are by far the most popular true wireless earbuds out there right now, and both versions of the AirPods 2 are back down to Black Friday's deeply discounted price. But if you want better sound quality, a better fit, and much better battery life, there's another Amazon sale that you need to check out. The Powerbeats Pro True Wireless Earphones are better than AirPods in literally every way, and that's why they retail for $250. That's exactly how much you'll pay of you buy them right now from Apple, but they're only $199.95 if you snag a pair at Amazon instead.

Powerbeats Pro - Totally Wireless Earphones - Black: $199.95

Here's more from the product page:

• Totally wireless high-performance earphones
• Up to 9 hours of listening time (more than 24 hours with charging case)
• Adjustable, secure-fit ear hooks for lightweight comfort and stability
• Reinforced design for sweat & water resistance during tough workouts
• Volume & track controls on each earbud, voice capability, and auto Play/pause
• Enhanced phone call performance and call handling from either earbud
• Powerful, balanced sound with dynamic range and noise isolation
• Earbuds connect independently via class 1 Bluetooth for extended range and fewer dropouts
• With fast Fuel, a 5-minute charge gives 1. 5 hours of playback when battery is Low1
• What's in the box: Power Beats Pro totally wireless earphones, charging case, ear tips with four size options, Lightning to USB-A charging cable, quick Start guide, warranty card

Powerbeats Pro - Totally Wireless Earphones - Black: $199.95

BGR Top Deals:

1. Uh, this could be a mistake because 65″ 4K Roku TVs aren’t supposed to cost just $450
2. The hottest Alexa speaker you’ve never heard of is down to just $19 today

Trending Right Now:

1. Sony’s going to be so mad that one of its hottest new PS5 features already leaked
2. PS5 leaker might have revealed the price of the Xbox Series X as well
3. There’s a brilliant way for Iron Man to return to the Avengers without ruining ‘Endgame’

Apple’s Powerbeats Pro are better than AirPods in every way, and they’re $50 off today originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 16:31:33 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you bought a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or iPod touch last fall, there's a good chance you already took advantage of Apple's promotion for a free year of Apple TV+, but if not, time is running out. As noted by 9to5Mac, Apple has begun sending out push notifications to remind those eligible for the promotion that they have to redeem the offer within 90 days of activating their device, and the first wave of expirations are rapidly approaching.

Continue reading...

BGR Top Deals:

1. Uh, this could be a mistake because 65″ 4K Roku TVs aren’t supposed to cost just $450
2. Today’s best deals: Rare 4K Roku TV blowout, $16 Wi-Fi extender, $8 wireless charger, $5 Alexa smart plugs, more

Trending Right Now:

1. Sony’s going to be so mad that one of its hottest new PS5 features already leaked
2. PS5 leaker might have revealed the price of the Xbox Series X as well
3. There’s a brilliant way for Iron Man to return to the Avengers without ruining ‘Endgame’

You may almost be out of time to get a free year of Apple TV+ – here’s how to sign up originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 16:02:13 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 LED Smart Bulbs cost $50 each when you buy them new. Pick up refurbs instead and you can get them for $39.99 a piece. If you think $40 for a single light bulb already sounds crazy, wait until we put it in perspective for you — for $10 less, you can pick up a MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener by Chamberlain that lets you control your garage door from your smartphone or integrate it with your smart home system. No more messing with keypads that never work on the first try, and no more wondering if you remembered to close your garage door on the way out... all for less than the cost of a single smart light bulb!

MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener Chamberlain MYQ-G0301 - Wireless & Wi-Fi enabled Garage Hub with S…: $29.98

Here's more info from the product page:

• NEW! FREE IN GARAGE DELIVERY WITH KEY BY AMAZON Prime members in select areas can opt in with the myQ Smart Garage Hub to get Amazon packages securely delivered right inside their garage, Simply link your myQ account in the Key App
• SMART GARAGE CONTROL Open and close your garage door from anywhere with your smartphone through the myQ App
• SMART NOTIFICATIONS Receive alerts when your garage door opens or closes in real time by setting up customized notifications great for busy families who come and go from the house through the garage
• UNIVERSAL – Easy-to-add functionality to upgrade your existing garage door opener. Works with all major brands of garage door openers made after 1993 that have standard safety sensors
• REQUIREMENTS needed to start - a router with 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi frequency, router with 802.11 B/G/N, a router within 50 feet. of the MyQ Smart Garage Hub (more details in PDF user manual)
• SIMPLE SETUP Wireless installation with easy step by step instructions provided in the myQ App means you’ll be able to enjoy smart garage control in minutes
• GUEST ACCESS Securely invite up to three people to control your garage with the myQ Guest Feature (Note: Not intended for guests under the age of 13)
• SMART COLLABORATIONS Linking your myQ account to Google Assistant and IFTTT is free for a limited time. No credit card required
• CORE FEATURES Opening, closing, and receiving garage door status notifications are INCLUDED with myQ App at no additional charge

MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener Chamberlain MYQ-G0301 - Wireless & Wi-Fi enabled Garage Hub with S…: $29.98

BGR Top Deals:

1. Uh, this could be a mistake because 65″ 4K Roku TVs aren’t supposed to cost just $450
2. Today’s best deals: Rare 4K Roku TV blowout, $16 Wi-Fi extender, $8 wireless charger, $5 Alexa smart plugs, more

Trending Right Now:

1. PS5 leaker might have revealed the price of the Xbox Series X as well
2. There’s a brilliant way for Iron Man to return to the Avengers without ruining ‘Endgame’
3. Sony’s going to be so mad that one of its hottest new PS5 features already leaked

Control your garage door with your phone for less than the cost of a smart light bulb originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 15:33:21 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule is the company's answer to NASA's demand for a crewed space vehicle that can be used to send astronauts to the International Space Station. Crew Dragon, along with Boeing's Starliner, has seen its fair share of delays, but a test that's scheduled for early Saturday morning will bring the hotly-anticipated spacecraft one big step closer to hauling human passengers.

It's a launch abort test, and it's scheduled to begin at 8:00 a.m. EST. As the name implies, this will not be a launch into space, but rather a test of how the Crew Dragon capsule keeps its passengers safe in the event of a rocket failure.

Continue reading...

BGR Top Deals:

1. Uh, this could be a mistake because 65″ 4K Roku TVs aren’t supposed to cost just $450
2. Today’s best deals: Rare 4K Roku TV blowout, $16 Wi-Fi extender, $8 wireless charger, $5 Alexa smart plugs, more

Trending Right Now:

1. There’s a brilliant way for Iron Man to return to the Avengers without ruining ‘Endgame’
2. PS5 leaker might have revealed the price of the Xbox Series X as well
3. Behold: The foldable iPhone of your dreams

SpaceX is about to blow up a rocket (on purpose), and you can watch live originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 15:04:37 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Unless you want Anker's Roav Viva (on sale right now for just $19.49!), which is basically an Echo Dot built into a car charger, then there's really only one car charger you should even consider. It's the AUKEY Flush-Fit Dual-Port USB Car Charger, and it's on sale right now on Amazon at an all-time low price. This mini car charger is so compact that you'll actually be able to close the cover on your power port without removing it. Two-packs normally cost just $15, but the coupon code OIIY7T8O slashes that down to $10.49 right now. That's just over $5 per charger!

AUKEY USB Car Charger, Flush Fit Ultra Compact Dual Port 24W/4.8A Output (2-Pack) for iPhone iP…: $10.49 (use code OIIY7T8O)

Here's what you need to know from the product page:

• Ultra Compact: Turn an unused 12V / 24V outlet in your car into 2 powerful USB charging ports that sit flush to the edge of the outlet
• Optimal Charging: Charge two devices simultaneously at full speed with 5V 2.4A of dedicated adaptive power output per USB port
• Universal Compatibility: Works with all USB-powered devices including Android & Apple smartphones & tablets
• EntireProtect: Built-in safeguards protect your devices against excessive current, overheating, and overcharging
• Package Contents: AUKEY CC-S1 24W Dual-Port Car Charger, User Manual.

AUKEY USB Car Charger, Flush Fit Ultra Compact Dual Port 24W/4.8A Output (2-Pack) for iPhone iP…: $10.49 (use code OIIY7T8O)

BGR Top Deals:

1. Uh, this could be a mistake because 65″ 4K Roku TVs aren’t supposed to cost just $450
2. Today’s best deals: Rare 4K Roku TV blowout, $16 Wi-Fi extender, $8 wireless charger, $5 Alexa smart plugs, more

Trending Right Now:

1. There’s a brilliant way for Iron Man to return to the Avengers without ruining ‘Endgame’
2. PS5 leaker might have revealed the price of the Xbox Series X as well
3. Behold: The foldable iPhone of your dreams

The tiniest dual-port car charger you’ve ever seen is only $5 when you buy two originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 17 Jan 2020 at 14:35:59 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The winners of the 45th annual competition showcase a spectacular blend of science and artistry under the microscope.

In case wringing your hands over the tax man weren’t enough, criminals are out there trying to swipe your hard-earned cash and personal information from right under your nose.

The daughter's name is Nicarri.

PARIS (AP) — Peppering the 8,000 pages of purported Central Intelligence Agency hacking data released Tuesday by WikiLeaks are reviews of some of the world's most popular anti-virus products.

1. Trump adds Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz to impeachment defense team  CNN
2. Graham blasts the Dems, 'Impeachment is manufactured BS'  Fox News
3. Lewinsky offers colorful remark in apparent response to Starr joining Trump defense team  CNN
4. Why the chief justice must ensure a fair presidential impeachment trial | TheHill  The Hill
5. The Opening Moves in the Trump Impeachment Trial  The New York Times
6. View full coverage on Google News

1. Supreme Court Takes Up Birth-Control Conscience Case  NPR
2. Supreme Court will again review Obamacare birth control mandate  POLITICO
3. Supreme Court to take up Trump appeal in ObamaCare birth control case | TheHill  The Hill
4. Supreme Court will tackle dispute over birth control, religious liberty  USA TODAY
5. Supreme Court to review Obamacare requirement that employer-provided health insurance plans pay for contraceptives  CNN
6. View full coverage on Google News

1. 11 U.S. troops needed treatment after Iranian missile attack, Pentagon says  The Washington Post
2. U.S. troops treated for injuries after Iran attack | USA TODAY  USA TODAY
3. Pentagon now says U.S. troops were injured in Iran missile attack  CBS This Morning
4. Iran could attack U.S. troops in Iraq without fear of American missile defense protection. Why?  NBC News
5. CNN tries to create a military conspiracy theory  Washington Examiner
6. View full coverage on Google News

1. Trump scolds CNN's Jim Acosta for trying to disrupt Oval Office news conference: 'Quiet'  Fox News
2. Pompeo stonewalls as evidence emerges of possible surveillance of ex-Ukraine ambassador  CNN
3. Pompeo Says He ‘Never Heard’ That Ambassador Might Be Under Surveillance  The New York Times
4. When Trump’s Thugs Turn on Him  The New York Times
5. When you’ve got Larry, Moe, Curly, Rudy and Rob on your side, what could go wrong? | Opinion  Miami Herald
6. View full coverage on Google News

1. Families of Canadians killed in Iran crash to receive $25,000 to help with first expenses, Trudeau says  CNN
2. The United States' main allies are abandoning Trump as his threats to world leaders backfire  Business Insider
3. Iran says it’s now enriching uranium at levels higher than before nuclear deal  Vox.com
4. Iran inches closer to Israel's red line  Washington Examiner
5. Every Day Europe Dithers Brings Iran More Enriched Uranium  Bloomberg
6. View full coverage on Google News

1. 3 Alleged Members Of Hate Group 'The Base' Arrested In Georgia  NPR
2. FBI arrests suspected white supremacists ahead of rally  CBS Evening News
3. FBI arrests three more members of right wing extremist group 'The Base'  BBC News
4. Virginia Capital on Edge as F.B.I. Arrests Suspected Neo-Nazis Before Gun Rally  The New York Times
5. FBI Arrests Suspected White Supremacists Ahead Of Virginia Gun Rally | NBC Nightly News  NBC News
6. View full coverage on Google News

1. Senators brace for contentious Tuesday as impeachment trial begins in earnest  CNN
2. Opinion | Schumer's demands for impeachment witnesses could haunt Democrats  Washington Post
3. Chuck Schumer: I saw senators 'visibly gulp'  CNN
4. WATCH LIVE: Schumer speaks about impeachment trial  Washington Post
5. View full coverage on Google News

How Iran targets you

      

Save on streaming

      

A fix for Windows 10

      

Talking Tech

      

From security to deleting embarrassing posts, Kim Komando has tips to make your social media experience safe and enjoyable.

      

Pinterest's slow progress in building a more diverse workforce is a sign that racial equality is not coming anytime soon to Silicon Valley tech.

      

Mojo Vision is developing Mojo Lens "smart contact lenses." Here's a first look at what may be your eye-popping augmented reality future.

      

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's not so friendly remarks ratcheted up already fraught tensions between Facebook and the Democratic leadership.

      

SpaceX and NASA are getting ready for a key test of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon commercial crew spacecraft on Saturday, and this should be the last major milestone that SpaceX has to pass in terms of demonstration missions before actual crew climb aboard the spaceship for a trip to the International Space Station. Starting at 8 AM ET (5 AM PT), a launch window opens during which SpaceX will hopefully perform what’s called an “in-flight abort” test of its Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 launch vehicle, to demonstrate how its safety systems would protect astronauts on board in the unlikely event of an unexpected incident during a real crew flight.

The plan for this mission is to launch the Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 — in this case, one that’s using a refurbished booster stage previously flown on three prior missions. This will be the Falcon 9’s last flight, however, as the plan includes loss of the rocket this time around instead of a controlled landing. The launch is intentionally being terminated early — just after the rocket achieves its “Max Q” point, or the moment during its flight when it’s under maximum atmospheric stress, at about 84 seconds post-liftoff.

At that point, the rocket will be about 19 kilometres (roughly 62,000 feet) above the surface of the Earth, and about four kilometres (2.5 miles) from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. SpaceX has rigged the Dragon spacecraft’s launch escape system to automatically trigger at this point, which will separate the crew spacecraft from the Falcon and propel it away from the rocket very quickly in order to get it to a safe distance to protect any future passengers. After around five minutes past launch, the Dragon will deploy its parachute system, and then at around 10 minutes after it should splash down in the Atlantic Ocean between 3 and 3.5 km (roughly 2 miles) from shore.

After that, crews will recover the Dragon capsule from the ocean, and return it to Cape Canaveral, where SpaceX will study the spacecraft, including human-sized dummies acting as passengers and sensors within to monitor what happened in the cabin during the test. They’ll use this to ideally show that the abort process works as designed and will protect astronauts on board the spacecraft in case of any emergency that results in an early mission termination.

In addition to the in-flight abort system, SpaceX and NASA are also using this mission to prepare for crewed flight in a number of other ways. Today, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who will crew the first piloted mission hopefully later this year, ran through a dry run of what they would experience in a live mission. They donned space suits and walked the transom that connects the Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 to its launchpad support structure, as NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine noted on Twitter.

The test will not involve any attempt to recover the rocket, as mentioned, and SpaceX Crew Mission Management Director Benji Reed said during a press conference today that they do anticipate some kind of “ignition” event with the Falcon 9’s second stage, which could possibly be large enough to be seen from the ground, he said. SpaceX crews will be on standby to recover as much as possible from the rocket wreckage, which will be useful to study, and they’ll also be on hand to minimize any potential environmental impact from the test.

This test was originally scheduled for roughly six months ago, but SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule intended for the mission was destroyed during an unexpected incident while test firing its engines. SpaceX and NASA investigated that explosion, and are now confident that they understand the cause of that incident, and have taken steps to ensure that a similar problem doesn’t happen again. The Crew Dragon being used now for Saturday’s test was originally intended to be the one used for actually flying astronauts, and another capsule is currently in development to serve that purpose.

SpaceX’s launch window for this test opens at 8 AM ET tomorrow, but spans four hours, and Reed said it could actually extend longer tomorrow if need be. NASA Commercial Crew program manager Kathy Leuders explained today that it’s crucial that not only launch conditions, but also recovery conditions, are optimal for the purposes of this test, so both will play a factor in when exactly they launch. Unlike with launches actually designed to reach a specific orbit, timing doesn’t have to be quite as on the nose, so there’s more flexibility in terms of making the decision to proceed or stand down. SpaceX has backup opportunities on both Sunday and Monday should they be required.

We’ll have a live stream and live coverage of the test starting tomorrow morning, so check back early Saturday. The stream will kick off around 15 minutes prior to the scheduled opening of the launch window, so at around 7:45 AM ET.

Continuing our irregular surveys of the public markets, two things happened this week that are worth our time. First, a third domestic technology company — Alphabet — passed the $1 trillion market capitalization threshold. And, second, software as a service (SaaS) stocks reached record highs on the public markets after retreating over last summer.

The two milestones, only modestly related events, indicate how temperate the public waters are for technology companies today, a fact that should extend warmth into the private market where startups, and their venture capital backers, work.

The happenings are good news for technology startups for a number of reasons, including that major tech players have never had as much wealth in hand with which to buy smaller companies, and strong SaaS valuations help both smaller startups fundraise, and their larger brethren possibly exit.

Indeed, the stridently good valuations that major tech companies and their smaller siblings enjoy today should be just the sort of market conditions under which unicorns want to debut. We’ll continue to make this point so long as the public markets continue to rise, pricing tech companies that have already floated higher like the cliche’s own tide.

But while Alphabet, Microsoft and Apple are worth $3.68 trillion as a trio, and SaaS stocks are now worth 12.3x times their revenue (using enterprise value instead of market cap, for those keeping score at home), not every private, venture-backed company will necessarily benefit from public investor largesse.

What about tech-ish startups?

How much the current public-market tech valuation expansion will help companies that are increasingly sorted into the tech-enabled bucket isn’t clear; some companies that went public in 2019 were quickly spit up by investors unwilling to support valuations that matched or rose above their final private valuations. SmileDirectClub was one such offering.

The dividing line between what counts as tech — often fuzzy — appears to be slicing along gross margin lines, and the repeatability of business. The higher margin, and more recurring a company is, the more it’s worth. This market reality is why SaaS stocks’ recent return to form is not a surprise.

For Casper and One Medical, the first two venture-backed IPO hopefuls of the year, the more tech-ish they can appear between now and pricing the better. Because technology companies today are valued so highly, perhaps even a faint dusting of tech will save their valuations as they cross the chasm between private and adult.

Cruise co-founder and CTO Kyle Vogt said Friday that disengagement reports released annually by California regulators are not a proxy for the commercial readiness or safety of self-driving cars.

Vogt, in a lengthy post on Medium, called for a new metric to determine whether an autonomous vehicle is ready for commercial deployment. The post suggests that the autonomous vehicle company, which had a valuation of $19 billion as of May, is already developing more comprehensive metrics.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles, which regulates the permits for autonomous vehicle testing on public roads in the state, requires companies to submit an annual report detailing “disengagements,” a term that means the number of times drivers have had to take control of a car. The DMV defines a disengagement as any time a test vehicle operating on public roads has switched from autonomous to manual mode for an immediate safety-related reason or due to a failure of the system. 

“It’s woefully inadequate for most uses beyond those of the DMV,” Vogt wrote. “The idea that disengagements give a meaningful signal about whether an AV is ready for commercial deployment is a myth.”

These disengagement reports will be released in a few weeks. Cruise did share some of its disengagement data, specifically the number of miles driven per disengagement event, between 2017 and 2019.

The so-called race to commercialize autonomous vehicles has involved a fair amount of theater, including demos. This lack of data has made it nearly impossible to determine if a company’s self-driving cars are safe enough or ready for the big and very real stage of shuttling people from Point A to Point B on city streets. Disengagement reports — as flawed as they might be — have been one of the only pieces of data that the public, and the media, have access to.

How safe is safe enough?

While that data might provide some insights, it doesn’t help answer the fundamental question for every AV developer planning to deploy robotaxis for the public: “How safe is safe enough?”

Vogt’s comments signal Cruise’s efforts to find a practical means of answering that question.

Competitors agree

Cruise is hardly the only company to question the disengagement reports, although this might be the most strongly worded and public call to date. Waymo told TechCrunch that it takes a similar view.

The reports have long been a source of angst among AV developers. The reports do provide information that can be useful to the public, such as number of vehicles testing on public roads. But it’s hardly a complete picture of any company’s technology.

The reports are wildly different; each company provides varying amounts of information, all in different formats. There is also disagreement over what is and what is not a disengagement. For instance, this issue got more attention in 2018 when Jalopnik questioned an incident involving a Cruise vehicle. In that case, a driver took manual control of the wheel as it passed through an intersection, but it wasn’t reported as a disengagement. Cruise told Jalopnik at the time that it didn’t meet the standard for California regulations.

The other issue is that disengagements don’t provide an “apples to apples” comparison of technology, as these test vehicles operate in a variety of environments and conditions.

Disengagements also often rise and fall along with the scale of testing. Waymo, for instance, told TechCrunch that its disengagements will likely increase as it scales up its testing in California.

And finally, more companies are using simulation or virtual testing instead of sending fleets of cars on public roads to test every new software build. Aurora, another AV developer, emphasizes its use of its virtual testing suite. The disengagement reports don’t include any of that data.

Vogt’s post also called out the industry for conducting carefully “curated demo routes that avoid urban areas with cyclists and pedestrians, constrain geofences and pickup/dropoff locations, and limit the kinds of maneuvers the AV will attempt during the ride.”

The shot could be interpreted as a shot at Waymo, which has recently conducted driverless demos on public streets in Chandler, Ariz. with reporters. TechCrunch was one of the first to have a driverless ride last year. However, demos are common practice among many other self-driving vehicle startups, and are particularly popular around events like CES. Cruise has conducted at least one demo, which was with the press in 2017.

Vogt suggested that raw, unedited drive footage that “covers long stretches of driving in real world situations” is hard to fake and a more qualitative indicator of technology maturity.

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that Eaze, a well-known cannabis-focused startup, is struggling to stay in business amidst a cash crunch, leadership turmoil, banking issues and a business model pivot. It’s a compelling, critical read.

The news, however, asks a question: How are other cannabis-focused startups faring? We’ll explore the question through the lens of fundraising and the public market results of public cannabis companies in Canada.

Fundraising

The European Commission is considering a temporary ban on the use of facial recognition technology, according to a draft proposal for regulating artificial intelligence obtained by Euroactiv.

Creating rules to ensure AI is ‘trustworthy and human’ has been an early flagship policy promise of the new Commission, led by president Ursula von der Leyen.

But the leaked proposal suggests the EU’s executive body is in fact leaning towards tweaks of existing rules and sector/app specific risk-assessments and requirements, rather than anything as firm as blanket sectoral requirements or bans.

The leaked Commission white paper floats the idea of a three-to-five-year period in which the use of facial recognition technology could be prohibited in public places — to give EU lawmakers time to devise ways to assess and manage risks around the use of the technology, such as to people’s privacy rights or the risk of discriminatory impacts from biased algorithms.

“This would safeguard the rights of individuals, in particular against any possible abuse of the technology,” the Commission writes, adding that: “It would be necessary to foresee some exceptions, notably for activities in the context of research and development and for security purposes.”

However the text raises immediate concerns about imposing even a time-limited ban — which is described as “a far-reaching measure that might hamper the development and uptake of this technology” — and the Commission goes on to state that its preference “at this stage” is to rely on existing EU data protection rules, aka the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The white paper contains a number of options the Commission is still considering for regulating the use of artificial intelligence more generally.

These range from voluntary labelling; to imposing sectorial requirements for the public sector (including on the use of facial recognition tech); to mandatory risk-based requirements for “high-risk” applications (such as within risky sectors like healthcare, transport, policing and the judiciary, as well as for applications which can “produce legal effects for the individual or the legal entity or pose risk of injury, death or significant material damage”); to targeted amendments to existing EU product safety and liability legislation.

The proposal also emphasizes the need for an oversight governance regime to ensure rules are followed — though the Commission suggests leaving it open to Member States to choose whether to rely on existing governance bodies for this task or create new ones dedicated to regulating AI.

Per the draft white paper, the Commission says its preference for regulating AI are options 3 combined with 4 & 5: Aka mandatory risk-based requirements on developers (of whatever sub-set of AI apps are deemed “high-risk”) that could result in some “mandatory criteria”, combined with relevant tweaks to existing product safety and liability legislation, and an overarching governance framework.

Hence it appears to be leaning towards a relatively light-touch approach, focused on “building on existing EU legislation” and creating app-specific rules for a sub-set of “high-risk” AI apps/uses — and which likely won’t stretch to even a temporary ban on facial recognition technology.

Much of the white paper is also take up with discussion of strategies about “supporting the development and uptake of AI” and “facilitating access to data”.

“This risk-based approach would focus on areas where the public is at risk or an important legal interest is at stake,” the Commission writes. “This strictly targeted approach would not add any new additional administrative burden on applications that are deemed ‘low-risk’.”

EU commissioner Thierry Breton, who oversees the internal market portfolio, expressed resistance to creating rules for artificial intelligence last year — telling the EU parliament then that he “won’t be the voice of regulating AI“.

For “low-risk” AI apps, the white paper notes that provisions in the GDPR which give individuals the right to receive information about automated processing and profiling, and set a requirement to carry out a data protection impact assessment, would apply.

Albeit the regulation only defines limited rights and restrictions over automated processing — in instances where there’s a legal or similarly significant effect on the people involved. So it’s not clear how extensively it would in fact apply to “low-risk” apps.

If it’s the Commission’s intention to also rely on GDPR to regulate higher risk stuff — such as, for example, police forces’ use of facial recognition tech — instead of creating a more explicit sectoral framework to restrict their use of a highly privacy-hostile AI technologies — it could exacerbate an already confusingly legislative picture where law enforcement is concerned, according to Dr Michael Veale, a lecturer in digital rights and regulation at UCL.

“The situation is extremely unclear in the area of law enforcement, and particularly the use of public private partnerships in law enforcement. I would argue the GDPR in practice forbids facial recognition by private companies in a surveillance context without member states actively legislating an exemption into the law using their powers to derogate. However, the merchants of doubt at facial recognition firms wish to sow heavy uncertainty into that area of law to legitimise their businesses,” he told TechCrunch.

“As a result, extra clarity would be extremely welcome,” Veale added. “The issue isn’t restricted to facial recognition however: Any type of biometric monitoring, such a voice or gait recognition, should be covered by any ban, because in practice they have the same effect on individuals.”

An advisory body set up to advise the Commission on AI policy set out a number of recommendations in a report last year — including suggesting a ban on the use of AI for mass surveillance and social credit scoring systems of citizens.

But its recommendations were criticized by privacy and rights experts for falling short by failing to grasp wider societal power imbalances and structural inequality issues which AI risks exacerbating — including by supercharging existing rights-eroding business models.

In a paper last year Veale dubbed the advisory body’s work a “missed opportunity” — writing that the group “largely ignore infrastructure and power, which should be one of, if not the most, central concern around the regulation and governance of data, optimisation and ‘artificial intelligence’ in Europe going forwards”.

It seems like every company making lidar has a new and clever approach, but Baraja takes the cake. Its method is not only elegant and powerful, but fundamentally avoids many issues that nag other lidar technologies. But it’ll need more than smart tech to make headway in this complex and evolving industry.

To understand how lidar works in general, consult my handy introduction to the topic. Essentially a laser emitted by a device skims across or otherwise very quickly illuminates the scene, and the time it takes for that laser’s photons to return allows it to quite precisely determine the distance of every spot it points at.

But to picture how Baraja’s lidar works, you need to picture the cover of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.”

GIFs kind of choke on rainbows, but you get the idea.

Imagine a flashlight shooting through a prism like that, illuminating the scene in front of it — now imagine you could focus that flashlight by selecting which color came out of the prism, sending more light to the top part of the scene (red and orange) or middle (yellow and green). That’s what Baraja’s lidar does, except naturally it’s a bit more complicated than that.

The company has been developing its tech for years with the backing of Sequoia and Australian VC outfit Blackbird, which led a $32 million round late in 2018 — Baraja only revealed its tech the next year and was exhibiting it at CES, where I met with co-founder and CEO Federico Collarte.

“We’ve stayed in stealth for a long, long time,” he told me. “The people who needed to know already knew about us.”

The idea for the tech came out of the telecommunications industry, where Collarte and co-founder Cibby Pulikkaseril thought of a novel use for a fiber optic laser that could reconfigure itself extremely quickly.

“We thought if we could set the light free, send it through prism-like optics, then we could steer a laser beam without moving parts. The idea seemed too simple — we thought, ‘if it worked, then everybody would be doing it this way,’ ” he told me, but they quit their jobs and worked on it for a few months with a friends and family round, anyway. “It turns out it does work, and the invention is very novel and hence we’ve been successful in patenting it.”

Rather than send a coherent laser at a single wavelength (1550 nanometers, well into the infrared, is the lidar standard), Baraja uses a set of fixed lenses to refract that beam into a spectrum spread vertically over its field of view. Yet it isn’t one single beam being split but a series of coded pulses, each at a slightly different wavelength that travels ever so slightly differently through the lenses. It returns the same way, the lenses bending it the opposite direction to return to its origin for detection.

It’s a bit difficult to grasp this concept, but once one does it’s hard to see it as anything but astonishingly clever. Not just because of the fascinating optics (something I’m partial to, if it isn’t obvious), but because it obviates a number of serious problems other lidars are facing or about to face.

First, there are next to no moving parts whatsoever in the entire Baraja system. Spinning lidars like the popular early devices from Velodyne are being replaced at large by ones using metamaterials, MEMS, and other methods that don’t have bearings or hinges that can wear out.

Baraja’s “head” unit, connected by fiber optic to the brain.

In Baraja’s system, there are two units, a “dumb” head and an “engine.” The head has no moving parts and no electronics; it’s all glass, just a set of lenses. The engine, which can be located nearby or a foot or two away, produces the laser and sends it to the head via a fiber-optic cable (and some kind of proprietary mechanism that rotates slowly enough that it could theoretically work for years continuously). This means it’s not only very robust physically, but its volume can be spread out wherever is convenient in the car’s body. The head itself also can be resized more or less arbitrarily without significantly altering the optical design, Collarte said.

Second, the method of diffracting the beam gives the system considerable leeway in how it covers the scene. Different wavelengths are sent out at different vertical angles; a shorter wavelength goes out toward the top of the scene and a slightly longer one goes a little lower. But the band of 1550 +/- 20 nanometers allows for millions of fractional wavelengths that the system can choose between, giving it the ability to set its own vertical resolution.

It could for instance (these numbers are imaginary) send out a beam every quarter of a nanometer in wavelength, corresponding to a beam going out every quarter of a degree vertically, and by going from the bottom to the top of its frequency range cover the top to the bottom of the scene with equally spaced beams at reasonable intervals.

But why waste a bunch of beams on the sky, say, when you know most of the action is taking place in the middle part of the scene, where the street and roads are? In that case you can send out a few high frequency beams to check up there, then skip down to the middle frequencies, where you can then send out beams with intervals of a thousandth of a nanometer, emerging correspondingly close together to create a denser picture of that central region.

If this is making your brain hurt a little, don’t worry. Just think of Dark Side of the Moon and imagine if you could skip red, orange and purple, and send out more beams in green and blue — and because you’re only using those colors, you can send out more shades of green-blue and deep blue than before.

Third, the method of creating the spectrum beam provides against interference from other lidar systems. It is an emerging concern that lidar systems of a type could inadvertently send or reflect beams into one another, producing noise and hindering normal operation. Most companies are attempting to mitigate this by some means or another, but Baraja’s method avoids the possibility altogether.

“The interference problem — they’re living with it. We solved it,” said Collarte.

The spectrum system means that for a beam to interfere with the sensor it would have to be both a perfect frequency match and come in at the precise angle at which that frequency emerges from and returns to the lens. That’s already vanishingly unlikely, but to make it astronomically so, each beam from the Baraja device is not a single pulse but a coded set of pulses that can be individually identified. The company’s core technology and secret sauce is the ability to modulate and pulse the laser millions of times per second, and it puts this to good use here.

Collarte acknowledged that competition is fierce in the lidar space, but not necessarily competition for customers. “They have not solved the autonomy problem,” he points out, “so the volumes are too small. Many are running out of money. So if you don’t differentiate, you die.” And some have.

Instead companies are competing for partners and investors, and must show that their solution is not merely a good idea technically, but that it is a sound investment and reasonable to deploy at volume. Collarte praised his investors, Sequoia and Blackbird, but also said that the company will be announcing significant partnerships soon, both in automotive and beyond.

Lee Trink has spent nearly his entire career in the entertainment business. The former president of Capitol Records is now the head of FaZe Clan, an esports juggernaut that is one of the most recognizable names in the wildly popular phenomenon of competitive gaming.

Trink sees FaZe Clan as the voice of a new generation of consumers who are finding their voice and their identity through gaming — and it’s a voice that’s increasingly speaking volumes in the entertainment industry through a clutch of competitive esports teams, a clothing and lifestyle brand and a network of creators who feed the appetites of millions of young gamers.

As the company struggles with a lawsuit brought by one of its most famous players, Trink is looking to the future — and setting his sights on new markets and new games as he consolidates FaZe Clan’s role as the voice of a new generation.

“The teams and social media output that we create is all marketing,” he says. “It’s not that we have an overall marketing strategy that we then populate with all of these opportunities. We’re not maximizing all of our brands.”

I talked yesterday about how VCs are just tired these days. Too many deals, too little time per deal, and constant hyper-competition with other VCs for the same equity.

One founder friend of mine noted to me last night that he has already received inbound requests from more than 90 investors over the past year about his next round — and he’s not even (presumably) fundraising. “I may have missed a few,” he deadpans — and really, how could one not?

All that frenetic activity, though, leads us to the paradox at the heart of 2020 venture capital: It’s the largest funds that are writing the earliest, smallest checks.

That’s a paradox because big funds need big rounds to invest in. A billion-dollar fund can’t write 800 $1 million seed checks with dollars left over for management fees (well, they could, but that would be obnoxious and impossible to track). Instead, the usual pattern is that as a firm’s fund size grows, its managing partners increasingly move to later-stage rounds to be able to efficiently deploy that capital. So the $200 million fund that used to write $8 million Series As transforms into a $1 billion fund writing $40 million Series Bs and Cs.

That’s logical. Yet, the real logic is a bit more complicated. Namely, that everyone is raising huge funds.

As this week’s big VC report from the National Venture Capital Association made clear, 2019 was in many ways the year of the big fund (and SoftBank didn’t even raise!). Twenty-one “mega-funds” launched last year (defined as raising more than $500 million), and that was actually below the numbers in 2018.

All that late-stage capital is scouring for late-stage deals, but there just aren’t that many deals to do. Sure, there are great companies and potentially great returns lying around, but there are also dozens of funds plotting to get access to that cap table, and valuation is one of the only levers these investors have to stand out from the fray.

This is the story of Plaid in many ways. The fintech data API layer, which Visa announced it is intending to acquire for $5.3 billion, raised a $250 million Series C in late 2018 from Index and Kleiner, all according to Crunchbase. Multiple VC sources have told me that “everyone” looked at the deal (everyone being the tired VCs if you will).

But as one VC who said “no” on the C round defended to me this week, the valuation last year was incredibly rich. The company had revenues in 2018 in the upper tens of millions, or so I have been told, which coupled with its publicly reported $2.65 billion Series C valuation implies a revenue multiple somewhere in the 30-50x range — extremely pricey given the company’s ongoing fight with banks to ensure it can maintain data access to its users’ accounts.

Jeff Kauflin at Forbes reported that the company’s revenues in 2019 are now in the lower three digits of millions, which means that Visa likely paid a similarly expensive multiple to acquire the company. Kleiner and Index doubled their money in a year or so, and no one should complain about that kind of IRR (particularly in growth investing), but if it weren’t for Visa and the beneficial alchemy of exit timing, all might have turned out very differently.

Worse than just expensive valuations, these later-stage rounds can become very proprietary and exclusive. From the sounds of it, Plaid ran a fairly open process for its Series C round, which allowed a lot of firms to look at the deal, helping to drive the valuation up while limiting dilution for earlier investors and the founder. But that’s not the only way to handle it.

Increasingly, firms that invested early are also trying to invest later. That Series A investor who put in $5 million also wants to put in the $50 million Series B and the $250 million Series C. After all, they have the capital, already know the company, have a relationship with the CEO and can avoid a time-consuming fundraise in the process.

So for many deals today, those later-stage cap tables are essentially locking out new investors, because there is already so much capital sitting around the cap table just salivating to double down.

That gets us straight to the paradox. In order to have access to later-stage rounds, you have to already be on the cap table, which means that you have to do the smaller, earlier-stage rounds. Suddenly, growth investors are coming back to early-stage rounds (including seed) just to have optionality on access to these startups and their fundraises.

As one VC explained to me last week (paraphrasing), “What’s weird today is that you have firms like Sequoia who show up for seed rounds, but they don’t really care about … anything. Valuation, terms, etc. It’s all a play for those later-stage rounds.” I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, to be clear, but ultimately, those one million-dollar checks are essentially a rounding error for the largest funds. The real return is in the mega rounds down the road.

Does that mean seed funds will cease to exist? Certainly not, but it’s hard to make money and build a balanced, risk-adjusted portfolio when your competitors literally don’t care and consider the investment a marketing and access expense. As for founders — the times are still really, really good if you can check the right VC boxes.