TechCrunch+

After cutting off prominent app makers like Tweetbot and Twitterific, Twitter today quietly updated its developer terms to ban third-party clients altogether.

Spotted by Engadget, the “restrictions” section of Twitter’s 5,000-some-word developer agreement was updated with a clause prohibiting “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.” Earlier this week, Twitter said that it was “enforcing long-standing API rules” in disallowing clients access to its platform but didn’t cite which specific rules developers were violating. Now we know — retroactively.

As Engadget notes, Twitter clients are a part of Twitter history — Twitterific was created before Twitter had a native iOS app of its own. And they’ve gained a larger following in recent years, thanks in part to their lack of ads.

Twitter’s attitude toward third-party clients has long been permissive and even supportive, with the company going so far as to remove a section from its developer terms that discouraged devs from replicating its core service. But that seems to have changed under CEO Elon Musk’s leadership.

The decision seems unlikely to foster goodwill toward Twitter at a time when the platform faces challenges on a number of fronts. In a blog post, Twitterrific’s Sean Heber called Twitter “increasingly capricious” and a company he “no longer recognize[d] as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.” Matteo Villa, the developer of Fenix, in an interview with Engadget called the lack of communication “insulting.” (Twitter has no communications department at present.)

Twitter is under immense pressure to turn a profit — or at least break even — as advertisers flee the platform, spurred by unpredictable, fast-changing content policies. The company, which has $12.5 billion in debt, is on the hook for $300 million in its first interest payment and has lost an estimated $4 billion in value since Musk acquired it at the end of October 2022. Fidelity recently slashed the value of its stake in Twitter by 56%.

Cutbacks at Twitter abound. Some employees are bringing their own toilet paper to work after the company reduced janitorial services, the New York Times reported, and Twitter has stopped paying rent for several of its offices. Musk has elsewhere attempted to save around $500 million in costs unrelated to labor, shutting down a data center and launching a fire sale after putting office items up for auction in a bid to recoup costs.

Twitter’s also heavily pushing its Twitter Blue plan (now with an annual option), aiming to make it a profit driver. It plans to lift its ban on political ads, chasing after campaign dollars in the 2024 U.S. elections. And the company is reportedly considering selling usernames through online auctions.

Twitter officially bans third-party clients after cutting off prominent devs by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Tesla CEO Elon Musk oversaw a 2016 video that overstated the capabilities of the automaker’s driver assistance system, Autopilot, according to internal emails viewed by Bloomberg. The emails show that Musk even dictated the opening tagline of the video that claimed the car drove itself. Earlier this week, a deposition from a senior engineer revealed that the car hadn’t been driving itself and had instead been following a pre-determined route along a high-definition map.

False and misleading

Elluswamy’s deposition was taken as evidence in a lawsuit against Tesla for a fatal 2018 crash involving former Apple engineer Walter Huang. The lawsuit alleges that errors by Autopilot, and Huang’s misplaced trust in the capabilities of the system, caused the crash.

State and federal agencies and customers have also called out Tesla for falsely promoting the capabilities its driver assistance systems, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (which is not actually fully self-driving), even though Tesla does advise its drivers to stay alert and focused while the systems are engaged.

Last July, the California Department of Motor Vehicles accused Tesla of falsely advertising its systems, something a handful of Tesla customers also alleged in a September lawsuit against the company.

Additionally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is actively investigating two crashes related to Autopilot. Tesla is also potentially facing a criminal investigation from the Department of Justice over its self-driving claims.

Musk oversaw misleading 2016 video saying Tesla drove itself by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

It looks like Dungeons & Dragons just succeeded on a death-saving throw. After weeks of backlash and protests from fans and content creators, Wizards of the Coast — the Hasbro-owned publisher of Dungeons & Dragons — announced that it will now license the tabletop role-playing game’s core mechanics under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This gives the community “a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license” to publish and sell works based on Dungeons & Dragons.

“Overall, what we’re going for here is giving good-faith creators the same level of freedom (or greater, for the things in Creative Commons) to create TTRPG content that’s been so great for everyone, while giving us the tools to ensure the game continues to become ever more inclusive and welcoming,” wrote Dungeons & Dragons executive producer Kyle Brink in a blog post.

This is a massive change of heart for the gaming giant. Earlier this month, Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) sent a document with a new open gaming license (OGL) to top Dungeons & Dragons content creators, asking them to sign what they called “OGL 1.1.” Some creators leaked the document in protest, exposing its predatory terms that would suffocate the prolific fan community and collapse some creators’ businesses. The now-retracted OGL 1.1 would have required any Dungeons & Dragons creator earning over $50,000 to write reports to WoTC, and any making over $750,000 to start paying a 25% royalty. These numbers might seem high, but these figures refer to gross revenue, not income — and the industry of third-party Dungeons & Dragons content is so large that the impact would be severe. Other creators worried about a clause in the contract that would allow WoTC to publish their work, potentially without credit or payment.

Over 77,000 creators and fans signed an open letter against these changes, and some went as far as canceling their subscriptions to D&D Beyond, an online platform for the game. Finally, WoTC admitted that they “rolled a 1” — for those uninitiated in TTRPG-speak, that means they screwed up really, really bad.

“There’s no royalty payment, no financial reporting, no license-back, no registration, no distinction between commercial and non-commercial. Nothing will impact any content you have already published under OGL 1.0a. That will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a. Your stuff is your stuff,” Brink wrote in today’s blog post. Later in the post, he affirms again, “You own your content. You don’t give Wizards any license-back, and for any ownership disputes, you can sue for breach of contract and money damages.”

The draft of the new OGL under Creative Commons — known as OGL 1.2 — is a big improvement from the last document. But some fans remain worried about terms that impact virtual tabletops and works already licensed under the original OGL, which dates back to 2000. Virtual tabletop (VTT) software helps people play games like Dungeons & Dragons when they’re not in the same room, and of course, these products exploded during the pandemic. Dungeons & Dragons does not currently have its own VTT, though. As part of the new OGL, WoTC wrote a draft of a brand-new VTT policy.

According to the VTT policy, it’s okay for developers to display content from the Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks. But WoTC is wary of content that is “more like a video game” than a TTRPG.

“What isn’t permitted are features that don’t replicate your dining room table storytelling,” the document says. “If you replace your imagination with an animation of the Magic Missile streaking across the board to strike your target, or your VTT integrates our content into an NFT, that’s not the tabletop experience.”

As far as content published under the original OGL goes, WoTC says that content already published will remain licensed, but moving forward, the old license will be deauthorized.

Tomorrow, WoTC will update the blog post with a link for fans to provide feedback — this survey will remain open until February 3. Then, within the following two weeks, WoTC will issue another update.

“The process will extend as long as it needs to. We’ll keep iterating and getting your feedback until we get it right,” Brink wrote.

This is a promising first step for Dungeons & Dragons to regain its fans’ trust. But when you make a death-saving roll, you have to succeed three times before your character can get back into the fray. Hopefully WoTC leadership keeps making good dice rolls.

Dungeons & Dragons’ publisher will put the game under a Creative Commons license by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Netflix founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings announced Thursday that he would step down after more than two decades at the company.

While news of his departure comes as a shock, Hastings noted that Netflix has planned its next era of leadership “for many years” in the announcement, which was shared on the company’s blog.

In 2020, Netflix named Ted Sarandos, who has long led content efforts at the company, as co-CEO alongside Hastings. At the time, Netflix characterized the change as formalizing the way that the company was already operating.

Netflix will maintain the co-CEO structure in Hasting’s absence, promoting COO Greg Peters to the tandem role with Sarandos.

“It was a baptism by fire, given COVID and recent challenges within our business,” Hastings said of Sarandos and Peters taking the reins.

“But they’ve both managed incredibly well, ensuring Netflix continues to improve and developing a clear path to reaccelerate our revenue and earnings growth. So the board and I believe it’s the right time to complete my succession.”

Hastings will stay involved with the company as executive chairman of the board, following a precedent shared by other prominent major tech company founders including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings steps down as co-CEO by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here.

Welcome back to Chain Reaction.

Do you believe in second chances? Well, FTX’s new CEO John J. Ray III hopes so. The disgraced crypto exchange’s new chief is open to the idea of restarting operations and possibly reviving the bankrupt company, according to a new report by WSJ. Time will tell if that happens and works out for both FTX and the company’s customers and creditors.

In other news, if you hadn’t heard of a little eight-letter crypto exchange called Bitzlato before Wednesday, you’re not alone. But apparently the U.S. Department of Justice knew what it was, and followed it so closely that they uncovered enough information to arrest the founder, Anatoly Legkodymov, for allegedly processing over $700 million of illicit funds.

While this arrest brought forth a number of jokes and confusion from crypto community members, who had no idea what Bitzlato was before the announcement, it also brought on a bit of annoyance that the DOJ isn’t taking action toward bigger players in the space.

Events like FTX’s bankruptcy shook the crypto industry, but longtime crypto players didn’t seem to know what Bitzlato was before the DOJ’s announcement. According to data of known wallets from Arkham, a crypto intelligence tool, wallets associated with Bitzlato contain just over $11,000; at its peak, they contained over $6 million, making Bitzlato a very small player in the industry.

All in all, this arrest points to the DOJ — and the U.S. government in general — cracking down on the crypto space. Like the rapper Biggie Smalls once said, “It’s like the more money we come across, the more problems we see.”

More details below.

This week in web3

Solana co-founder sees potential for devs to lead its network in 2023 (TC+)

As the crypto developer ecosystem expands, major ecosystems outside of the top two cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin and Ethereum — are growing, according to a new report. Solana saw the highest number of new developers contributing to the ecosystem, with its developer count rising by 83%, the fastest of any major blockchain. “2023 might just be the year when other devs already building on Solana collectively lead the direction of the network,” Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana, said to TechCrunch.

DOJ charges founder of crypto exchange Bitzlato for processing $700M of illegal funds

As mentioned above, little-known crypto exchange Bitzlato is in hot water. According to the DOJ, Bitzlato allowed users to trade cryptocurrencies without verifying their identity. The Hong Kong-registered exchange advertised itself to customers by saying that “neither selfies nor passports [are] required.” The government said that this lack of know-your-customer procedures turned Bitzlato into a hotbed for criminal activity.

Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake draws increasing institutional interest (TC+)

Ethereum’s shift from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in September 2022 increased interest in staking across a number of parties — including institutions. The success of the Merge propelled Ethereum from “a smart contract platform lagging behind” into “something that was doing things right,” Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of Anchorage Digital, a crypto bank last valued at over $3 billion, said to TechCrunch. “Interest from investors grew and the appetite changed dramatically.”

Crypto.com cuts 20% jobs amid ‘significant damage’ to industry from FTX

Crypto exchange Crypto.com is cutting its global workforce by 20%, it said on Friday, as it navigates ongoing economic headwinds and “unforeseeable” industry events. This is the second major layoff at the Singapore-headquartered Crypto.com, which cut 250 jobs in mid-last year. The company did not say which roles were being eliminated in the new round of layoffs but blamed the collapse of FTX, whose misappropriation of customers’ funds and bankruptcy “significantly damaged trust in the industry.”

Crypto in for a ‘choppy year’ of slow capital deployment, investors say (TC+)

While some crypto-focused venture capitalists are bullish for 2023, others see it as a hazardous time. Many investors are trying to put last year’s chaotic market behind them and look forward to the future in a still investor-centric environment. But the competition in the market will heat up as investors write fewer checks and become more selective.

The latest pod

Last week, Chain Reaction launched Season 2 with an episode with Ryan Wyatt, president of Polygon Labs, one of the biggest market shakers and layer-2 blockchains in the crypto space that’s building on top of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Next week, we’ll be releasing our second episode with Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos, a new-ish layer-1 blockchain that raised a total of $350 million in funding in 2022.

Stay tuned.

Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the latest episodes, and please leave us a review if you like what you hear!

Follow the money

ZK proof-focused startup Ulvetanna raises $15 million in a seed round
Obol Labs raises $12.5 million in a Series A round
The =nil; Foundation raises $22 million to build out a proof-based marketplace
Metahood raises $3 million to build a metaverse-based real estate portal
Sleepagotchi raises $3.5 million to gamify and reward people for sleeping

This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.

More money, more problems for crypto by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

The clock is ticking for Uber to electrify its fleet, and the rideshare company wants automakers to help by designing cheaper electric vehicles for its drivers.

Lawmakers are setting deadlines for rideshare companies to ditch fossil fuels (California‘s Air Resources Board among them), and Uber has its own electrification deadlines, which range from 2025 to 2030. That’s all well and good, but electric vehicles are still too pricey for most people, including rideshare drivers.

So, chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi says Uber is in talks with automakers to build EVs that sacrifice speed, or even a wheel or two, to drive down the sticker price. The CEO didn’t name the specific automakers that Uber is apparently working with, but last year the company debuted a rideshare-focused prototype from U.K.-based automaker Arrival.

“Top speeds that many cars have are not necessary for city driving that’s associated with rideshare,” Khosrowshahi said on Thursday at a Wall Street Journal event. “We’re also talking about vehicles that are purpose-built” for delivering things like groceries, he added. “You can imagine smaller vehicles — two-wheelers, three-wheelers — that have trunk space that can get through traffic easier that have a much smaller footprint, both in terms of environmental and also traffic footprint, than let’s say a car.”

The CEO also said the passenger area could change, with riders potentially “facing each other.” (The executive also didn’t say if Uber would cover detailing costs from the bouts of motion sickness I assume this would trigger.)

When it comes to meal and grocery delivery, Uber isn’t the only company to see potential in much smaller vehicles with fewer wheels. Even in markets like the U.S., where auto rickshaws aren’t common, several companies have talked up this idea in recent years, including Arcimoto and ElectraMeccanica.

In race to electrify, Uber wants EVs that sacrifice top speeds, wheels by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch

There’s no shortage of tools for brainstorming, collaboration and keeping all your knowledge in one place. Still, judging from the number of new tools that come to market on a regular basis, it seems that people are frustrated with the available tools.

Scrintal recently raised $1 million to build its visual collaborative knowledge base tool and shared its deck for us to take a peek under the hood.

We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that.

Slides in this deck

Cover slide
Problem slide part 1
Problem slide part 2
Solution slide part 1
Solution slide part 2
Value proposition slide
User testimonials slide
Traction slide
Revenue slide
Retention slide
User profile slide
Growth projection slide
Vision slide
The ask slide
Contact slide
Appendices cover slide
Appendix 1: Why now?
Appendix 2: Competitive landscape
Appendix 3: Product and growth model

Three things to love

Scrintal is entering a crowded and chaotic market; without really trying, I can name five or six well-established competitors in that space. The good news is that the company seems to know that and tackles its advantages head-on.

Clarity of value proposition

Promising a 10x increase in work speed is a hell of a claim, and as a would-be investor I’d want to see some proof — but the story is told very well. This value proposition slide comes after a pretty thorough examination of the problem space and the solution the company is building, and puts great clarity around what the tool does and who it does it for.

Storytelling to explain the benefits

Getting your users to tell your story for you is such an obvious storytelling technique, often used in sales decks. It’s remarkably rarely used in VC pitch decks, which I think is a tremendous shame. Here, Scrintal is using its customer testimonials to highlight various selling points and benefits in a way that feels seamless and elegant.

The stats shown on the slide (66% fewer apps used, 50% less time spent, 30% fewer meetings) tell one part of the story. The headlines tell another. The quotes are helpful for filling out the story even further, and even doing a quick skim of the job titles of the people sharing the testimonials helps give an impression of the breadth of how the companies are able to draw benefits from Scrintal.

I presume that the places it says “user name” are redacted and that the “real” deck shows the names and businesses that are using the product, but even without that, it shows how well you can use testimonials and user interviews to your favor.

For startups, this slide is a lesson in how to think creatively about sharing your journey to date with potential investors.

I’m not in love with how much text there is on this slide — you wouldn’t want to use this for a presentation deck — but it’s a great slide for a send-home deck. It adds a lot of context and does so in a way that is super easy to understand even without a voice-over or additional information.

A bold vision

This slide isn’t strictly a vision slide — it does a lot more than that. It shows off what some of the competitor valuations are and explores the nature of the business models of those competitors. It shares the trajectory of its plan (although the step functions from visual OS to machine learning to workspace to visual knowledge base are a little unclear to me). Having said that, in a pitch context, I can see this being a helpful slide to guide some of the conversations with the investors in the right direction.

This slide isn’t a complete slam dunk, however, and there are a few things that could be improved. I wish the vision was clearer: “transform the way 1B+ people create ideas” is pretty fluffy. Yes, the company wants to transform it, but from what to what, and why? It’s also a little confusing to me why the company is talking about the European market only — it’s a big world out there, and the company’s pricing is in U.S. dollars, so seeing the “platform expansion” limit itself is confusing.

In the rest of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three things Scrintal could have improved or done differently, along with its full pitch deck!

Three things that could be improved

One of the big things investors are looking for when evaluating a startup is whether it is able to gradually de-risk what it is doing, stage by stage. A million dollars isn’t a huge fundraising round by most standards, and the company is likely at the earliest stages of its value-creation journey. That means that the deck needs to make something pretty clear: What is it doing in the current stage to prove some of its hypotheses? Sadly, the Scrintal deck is a little lacking on that front.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Scrintal’s $1M seed deck by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Facebook parent Meta announced today it’s further centralizing various user settings across its suite of apps — Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. As a result, several existing settings will be relocated to Meta’s “Accounts Center” feature, first launched in 2020. Specifically, the changes will see Meta moving settings related to personal details, passwords, security options and ad preferences to this area, which is accessible from the Settings page within each app.

Meta says the update is aimed at making its settings experience easier for consumers to use. But in reality, the constant relocation of apps’ settings — something Facebook, in particular, has been notorious for re-arranging over the years — can lead to consumer confusion. In this case, however, it may not be too difficult to find the newly moved items, as they’re still going to be in the Settings section.

Now over a couple years old, Meta’s Accounts Center was introduced at a time when multiple regulators and governments had been investigating the company for its antitrust behavior. Though the feature in some ways highlights the extensive data collection practices across Meta’s family of apps, it can also be used as a means of demonstrating to lawmakers how Meta is making it simpler for consumers to manage their data — or so the company hopes.

With the update, consumers will be able to make choices about their data that are more consistent across platforms, Meta argues in its announcement about the new features. For instance, users could set their ad topic preferences across both Facebook and Instagram in one place, it says.

In addition to the relocated settings, Meta is updating data about users’ activity from Partners’ control, it adds, now calling this Activity information from ad partners. This is intended to help people see how their activity is sent to other websites and apps to power ads, Meta explains. The company says it’s also making changes aimed at allowing people to better understand their options when it comes to ads shown by Meta on other websites and apps and is exploring different ways of allowing users to customize these experiences — including through options that allow them to see fewer ads of things that don’t interest them.

These latter updates follow the rollout of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy changes on iOS, which impacted Meta’s ad business and its revenues. Since then, companies have been looking to find other ways to continue to personalize ads for their users, as doing so leads to a more effective and profitable ad business. As Meta’s changes are only today being announced, it’s too early to make comments on how these revised tools for configuring the user’s interests and ad preferences could be tied to a larger attempt to workaround ATT using direct user input, but it’s likely that’s been a part of the reasoning here.

Meta says the changes will launch today but “gradually” roll out to Facebook, Messenger and Instagram over the months ahead.

Meta centralizes more user and privacy settings across its apps, announces changes to ads controls by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

I managed to squeeze the remaining vestiges out of CES 2023 in last week’s Actuator. The good news is that things are starting to pick up again like clockwork. If you’ve emailed me about work stuff in the past week, I apologize for the delay — I’ve been out of one frying pan and into the next. Anecdotally, I’ll say this is a net positive. Robotics news took a brief respite over the holidays, but things are coming fast and furious again.

It’s not all good news, of course. The calendar reset a couple weeks back — but unfortunately, all of the economic doom and gloom doesn’t get a fresh start with it. This year is going to be a reckoning. As ominous as it sounds, this is not a wholly good or bad thing, mind. It’s more that, after two years of relentless optimism for robotics and automation, the check is coming due for many.

This will be a year of sink or swim for many. As VC becomes harder to come by, runways suddenly shorten, and to sufficiently stretch the metaphor, no one wants to deal with a shrinking runway at takeoff. If you can’t rope in that $20 million round you were banking on, suddenly you’re faced with some extremely hard decisions. That could take the form of a pivot, a severe belt tightening (layoffs, thinning out the roadmap), exploring a sell-off or other worst-case scenario.

All of the above options involve an existential change for everyone involved. Again, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Some well-positioned firms will come out of it better, as a clear front runner in the category. It could mean acquiring a smaller firm, combining teams and coming out stronger for it. Heck, even those who have had to take the extremely unfortunate (and life-altering) action of layoffs could ultimately come out the other side with a kind of renewed sense of focus.

All of this is top of mind, in part, because of the recent Intrinsic news, which just missed the deadline for last week’s newsletter. It’s a weird one. I’m hoping to catch up with the Alphabet team soon to discuss a series of events that included a couple of acquisitions followed by a 20% staff reduction, amounting to around 40 people. Certainly I’m aware that the timeline for acquisitions and personnel decisions don’t always line up in an ideal fashion.

I’m always keenly aware of how big companies like Alphabet make these sorts of decisions for their bottom line. The fact is that it can be a lot harder to justify long-tail commitments — particularly those that aren’t deemed essential to the company’s core mission. None of this should be taken as a repudiation of Intrinsic’s mission, of course — the work it and other companies are doing in the robotics software space is key to the future of industrial implementation. If I had to venture a guess (as I am contractually obligated to do), I would say that it’s more a reprioritization on Alphabet’s part.

An Intrinsic spokesperson told TechCrunch:

Intrinsic’s leadership has made the difficult decision to let go a number of our team members. We have communicated the news directly with them. We fully acknowledge how hard this will be and are offering as much proactive support as possible. This decision was made in light of shifts in prioritization and our longer-term strategic direction. It will ensure Intrinsic can continue to allocate resources to our highest priority initiatives, such as building our software and AI platform, integrating the recent strategic acquisitions of Vicarious and OSRC (commercial arm Open Robotics), and working with key industry partners. While incredibly tough to do, we believe this decision is necessary for us to continue our mission.

No question in my mind this was a difficult decision. Among other things, it’s not the sort of vote of confidence a young company is hoping for out the gate. But Intrinsic has a lot of smart folks on board — even more so after those acquisitions — and in spite of the downsizing, Alphabet does, of course, have tremendous resources if and when it turns that faucet back on.

The other bit of news I wanted to touch on off the top was yesterday’s Boston Dynamics news. One thing’s for sure — the Massachusetts firm makes a mean video. A few dropped this week showcasing new grippers for Atlas. The humanoid robot utilizes its new appendages to lend a couple of hands at a makeshift construction site. Here’s a breakdown from BD:

Atlas’ ability to pick up and move objects of different sizes, materials, and weights (the wooden plank and tool bag) while staying balanced is enabled by improved locomotion and sensing capabilities. For this video the team installed utility “claw” grippers with one fixed finger and one moving finger. These simple grippers are designed for heavy lifting tasks and first appeared in the Samuel Adams [Super Bowl] commercial where Atlas held a keg over its head.
Improved control systems in order to 180-degree jump while holding the wooden plank.
Performing a spinning jump while throwing the tool bag. To accomplish this task the team extended the model predictive controller (MPC) to consider the coupled motion of both the robot and object together.
Pushing the wooden box from the platform, which meant Atlas needed to generate enough power to cause the box to fall without sending itself off of the platform.
Atlas’ concluding move, an inverted 540-degree, multi-axis flip, adds a symmetry to the robot’s movement making it a much more difficult skill than previously performed parkour.

I would caution that nothing Boston Dynamics shows should be read as anything more than proof of concept. That’s doubly the case with Atlas, which is a research robot, through and through. The caveat here, of course, is that new(ish) owner, Hyundai, has been very aggressive about commercializing these products. Imagining some more productized Atlas offspring helping out around their automotive factories doesn’t seem far out of the realm of possibility, for example.

Atlas certainly has a sizable head start on Tesla’s promised (threatened?) all-purpose humanoid. It remains to be seen what Figure is working on as well. Most of all, I look forward to a renewed, spirited debate around making robots in our own image.

Here’s a fun piece from Devin about a drone from Swiss scientists designed to collect “external DNA” from treetops. That means cruising around picking up evidence like skin, feathers and waste to determine what animals have been hanging out in the area. Devin here:

The drone looks a bit like a modernist light fixture, with a beautifully crafted wood frame and plastic shielding, and strips of adhesive tape or “humidified cotton” mounted on its lower surfaces. After being guided to a generally favorable position, it hovers above a branch to be sampled and monitors any movement like swaying or bouncing, synchronizing its approach. When it makes contact, it pushes with enough pressure to cause loose eDNA materials to transfer to the strips, but not so much that it pushes the branch out of the way. Essentially, it leans on the tree.

This week, German firm United Robotics Group announced last week that it’s acquiring Spanish mobile robotics and manipulation startup/video game hedgehog antagonizer, Robotnik Automation. URG cites the company’s strong foothold in markets like Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, the U.S., France, Germany and Italy as a key motivator in the acquisition.

Says United Robotics co-CEO Thomas Linkenheil:

We have been working with Robotnik as our strategic partner and I am delighted to see the company join our group. We will benefit from 70 highly experienced robotics experts, especially in the areas of R&D and Software. This investment will support us in the development of further applications for CobiotX, the third generation of robots for humans. We look forward to working with the local management team around Roberto Guzmán and Rafael López who are leading the company since the very beginning. We are very confident to leverage synergies.”

If there’s one thing we’re passionate about here at Actuator HQ, it’s leveraging synergies.

Lastly for the week is me trying to find a way to convince the T&E team to get me back to Pittsburgh for the week, to check out the nonprofit “Robotics Factory.” With backing from CMU and the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, it’s definitely a space worth watching in the coming year.

Per the official site:

The Robotics Factory, an array of robotics programs led by Innovation Works and the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, is a part of the $63 million Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant awarded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) to the Southwestern Pennsylvania New Economy Collaborative. The Robotics Factory will create, accelerate and scale robotics startups in the Pittsburgh region.

All right, back to work for me. I’ve got a bunch of stories in the works that will be popping up in future Actuators. Be the first to see ’em by signing up here.

Building up and tearing down by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

A date has been set for a trial by jury in a significant antitrust case against Google involving its alleged abuses of power in the Android app market. Fortnite maker Epic Games and dating app giant Match Group, joined by over three dozen state Attorneys General, have accused Google of unfairly leveraging its market dominance and harming competition through its Google Play Store terms and practices. In particular, the plaintiffs take issue with the commissions Google requires on app sales and in-app purchases as well as the control Google has over Android app distribution, in general. The case will now proceed to a jury trial on November 6, 2023, a judge in the Northern District of California has ruled.

Epic Games began its path to suing the app store giants, Apple and Google, back in 2020 when it introduced a direct payment option in Fortnite to its iOS and Android apps, prompting Apple and Google to boot the mobile game from their respective app stores.

Epic then sued both companies for antitrust abuses. Apple largely won its case, but both sides appealed the ruling as Epic still wants Apple held accountable for anti-competitive practices, while Apple didn’t want to change its terms to permit third-party payments, as the district judge had decided would be required. In an appeal hearing in November, the DoJ voiced its concerns over how the lower court had misinterpreted U.S. antitrust law — a signal of the increased interest the U.S. government has in the prosecutions of the tech giants. (The DoJ is also said to be in the early stages of filing its own suit against Apple.)

Epic’s claims against Google, while largely similar to Apple’s, have to take into account the differences with Google’s app distribution platform. Unlike Apple, which prevents any other means of installing apps on iOS devices outside its own App Store, Google permits apps to be sideloaded on Android devices. In fact, Epic Games chose to distribute Fortnite to users outside the Play Store when it launched on Android, and after the game was kicked out of Google Play for terms violations.

To aid its case, Epic has focused part of its antitrust claim on the other alleged means Google used to maintain market power, including an internal program where Google paid game developers hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to keep their games on the Play Store. Google, however, maintains the program is “proof that Google Play competes fairly with numerous rivals for developers,” it said.

Match Group had also sued Google over its Play Store practices, accusing Google of charging developers “exorbitant fees.” Google shot back, saying Match just wants to get out of paying for the services it provides the company as part of its platform.

Epic and Match filed to amend their complaint in October by adding new antitrust counts to their case. Google last month asked the court to disallow these requests saying, among other things, the claims were filed too late.

In a more recent hearing related to this case, a California federal judge criticized Google for not preserving evidence from employee chats, after learning internal communications were taking place in Google Chat, where messages were automatically deleted after 24 hours. Though employees can change the auto-delete setting, Google apparently did not enforce this setting to be turned on. The U.S. District Judge James Donato asked the parties how many of the 260 Google employees who received a litigation hold notice had chosen not to preserve their chats, according to a report from Law360.

The judge also threatened Google with a “substantial, trial-related penalty,” if the court found evidence related to the trial was destroyed.

“I think there’s little doubt from the evidence that I’ve heard so far that Google’s chat function could in fact have contained evidence relevant … to this case,” the judge said.

Dkt 373 – 2022.11.10 -Google Chat Deletions by TechCrunch on Scribd

Epic and Match’s lawsuit against Google also includes participation from 39 Attorneys General (38 states plus the District of Columbia). A consumer class action is involved, too, and is seeking $4.7 billion in damages, Reuters reported. The amount is based on what the plaintiffs believe consumers were overcharged due to the Play Store’s fees — increases that developers passed along to their own customers. This number is likely going to be disputed, given that it’s not clear if developers would have offered consumers any additional savings if developers could sidestep fees, rather than keeping the money for themselves.

The case is one of two notable antitrust complaints involving Google. The other is the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Google over its search engine practices. In this one, the DoJ alleges that Google illegally maintains its position as the No. 1 search engine by paying out billions of dollars to Apple, Samsung, and other telecoms to be the default search engine on mobile devices.

Epic and Match’s antitrust case against Google heads to jury trial on November 6 by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch