“It is time for me to move on . . . I’m taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate frisbee,” WhatsApp co-founder, CEO and Facebook board member Jan Koum wrote today. The announcement followed shortly after The Washington Post reported that Koum would leave due to disagreements with Facebook management about WhatsApp user data privacy and weakened encryption. Koum obscured that motive in his note that says, “I’ll still be cheering WhatsApp on – just from the outside.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg quickly commented on Koum’s Facebook post about his departure, writing “Jan: I will miss working so closely with you. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done to help connect the world, and for everything you’ve taught me, including about encryption and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people’s hands. Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp.” That comment further tries to downplay the idea that Facebook pushed Koum away by trying to erode encryption.

The move comes 3.5 years after WhatsApp’s acquisition, meaning Koum may have vested much of his stock and have fewer financial incentives to stay. It’s currently unclear what will happen to Koum’s Facebook board seat that WashPo says he’ll vacate, or who will replace him as WhatsApp’s CEO.

One possible candidate for the CEO role would be WhatsApp business executive Neeraj Arora, a former Google corporate development manager who’s been with WhatsApp since 2011 — well before the Facebook acquisition. A source described him as the #4 at WhatsApp.

Values misaligned

Koum sold WhatsApp to Facebook in 2014 for a jaw-dropping $19 billion. But since then it’s more than tripled its user count to 1.5 billion, making the price to turn messaging into a one-horse race seem like a steal. But at the time, Koum and co-founder Brian Acton were assured that WhatsApp wouldn’t have to run ads or merge its data with Facebook’s. So were regulators in Europe, where WhatsApp is most popular.

A year and a half later, though, Facebook pressured WhatsApp to change its terms of service and give users’ phone numbers to its parent company. That let Facebook target those users with more precise advertising, such as by letting businesses upload lists of phone numbers to hit those people with promotions. Facebook was eventually fined $122 million by the European Union in 2017 — a paltry sum for a company earning more than $4 billion in profit per quarter.

But the perceived invasion of WhatsApp user privacy drove a wedge between Koum and the parent company well before the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. A source confirms that Koum had been considering leaving for a year. Acton left Facebook in November, and has publicly supported the #DeleteFacebook movement since.

WashPo writes that Koum was also angered by Facebook executives pushing for a weakening of WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption in order to facilitate its new WhatsApp For Business program. It’s possible that letting multiple team members from a business all interact with its WhatsApp account could be incompatible with strong encryption. Facebook plans to finally make money off WhatsApp by offering bonus services to big companies like airlines, e-commerce sites and banks that want to conduct commerce over the chat app.

Jan Koum (Photo: TOBIAS HASE/AFP/Getty Images)

Koum was heavily critical of advertising in apps, once telling Forbes that “Dealing with ads is depressing . . . You don’t make anyone’s life better by making advertisements work better.” He vowed to keep them out of WhatsApp. But over the past year, Facebook has rolled out display ads in the Messenger inbox. Without Koum around, Facebook might push to expand those obtrusive ads to WhatsApp as well.

The high-profile departure comes at a vulnerable time for Facebook, with its big F8 developer conference starting tomorrow despite Facebook simultaneously shutting down parts of its dev platform as penance for the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Meanwhile, Google is trying to fix its fragmented messaging strategy, ditching apps like Allo to focus on a mobile carrier-backed alternative to SMS it’s building into Android Messages.

While the News Feed made Facebook rich, it also made it the villain. Messaging has become its strongest suit thanks to the dual dominance of Messenger and WhatsApp. Considering many users surely don’t even realize WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, Koum’s departure over policy concerns isn’t likely to change that. But it’s one more point in what’s becoming a thick line connecting Facebook’s business ambitions to its cavalier approach to privacy.

You can read Koum’s full post below.

“We expect to integrate phone payments in the future,” said a spokesperson. “However we are not in a position to confirm timings.” When asked by Independent.ie to clarify what “phone payments” meant, the bank representative said “Apple and Android Pay.”

Apple Pay has been available in Ireland since March of 2017, and the payments service works with Mastercard, Visa, AIB, Boon, KBC, and Ulster Bank, leaving Bank of Ireland as the one significant holdout.

Apple Pay is available on all of Apple’s modern devices, including the iPhone 6 and later, Apple Watch models, and the newest Macs with Touch ID support.

Apple Pay in Ireland can be used wherever contactless payments are accepted, with Apple listing specific Apple Pay partners that include Aldi, Boots, Burger King, Dunnes, iConnect, Harvey Normal, Lidl, and more on its Apple Pay Ireland website.

Hundreds of suspected victims of human trafficking have been rescued by police in 13 countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.

The international police organisation Interpol said on Monday nearly 350 victims – who may have been subjected to sexual exploitation and forced labour – had been saved as part of a project to combat human trafficking in the region.

Police arrested 22 individuals during Operation Libertad raids, carried out between April 3-9, which marked the culmination of the Canadian government-funded two-and-a-half-year effort, Interpol said.

Tim Morris, Interpol’s executive director of police services, said in a statement on Monday the operation had shown the “power of Interpol [in] providing a platform for the 13 participating countries”, which included Brazil, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela among others.

“But what sits behind these numbers is the human story,” Morris said.

Children and adults found working in nightclubs, farms, mines, factories and open-air markets were among those rescued, having been lured across borders by traffickers targeting vulnerable people with promises of better lives, Interpol said.

40 million victims

Cem Kolcu, a coordinator for Interpol’s Trafficking in Human Beings unit, said the victims had been misled by those exploiting them.

“What traffickers don’t advertise are the working conditions their victims will be subject to once their final destination is reached,” Kolcu said.

“During this operation, we identified women being forced to work out of spaces no bigger than coffins, for example.”

More than 40 million people worldwide are victims of human trafficking, according to the United Nations International Labour Organisation, 75 percent of whom are female.

Chinese authorities revealed over the weekend that they have the capability of retrieving deleted messages from the almost universally used WeChat app. The admission doesn’t come as a surprise to many, but it’s rare for this type of questionable data collection tactic to be acknowledged publicly.

As noted by the South China Morning Post, an anti-corruption commission in Hefei province posted Saturday to social media that it has “retrieved a series of deleted WeChat conversations from a subject” as part of an investigation.

The post was deleted Sunday, but not before many had seen it and understood the ramifications. Tencent, which operates the WeChat service used by nearly a billion people (including myself), explained in a statement that “WeChat does not store any chat histories — they are only stored on users’ phones and computers.”

The technical details of this storage were not disclosed, but it seems clear from the commission’s post that they are accessible in some way to interested authorities, as many have suspected for years. The app does, of course, comply with other government requirements, such as censoring certain topics.

There are still plenty of questions, the answers to which would help explain user vulnerability: Are messages effectively encrypted at rest? Does retrieval require the user’s password and login, or can it be forced with a “master key” or backdoor? Can users permanently and totally delete messages on the WeChat platform at all?

Fears over Chinese government access to data held or handled by Chinese companies has led to a global backlash against those companies, including some countries (including the U.S.) banning Chinese-made devices and services from sensitive applications or official use altogether.

The vehicles first took to the streets in major American cities like New York in 2015, and they have since traveled to Croatia, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Apple periodically updates a list of locations where the vehicles will be collecting data on its website.

Apple’s page notes that it will “blur faces and license plates on collected images prior to publication,” suggesting that the company is working on a feature similar to Google’s Street View for Apple Maps.

Back in 2015, Mark Gurman reported that Apple planned to launch a 3D street view feature, based on a combination of its existing Flyover mode with street-level data. He also said the data would help Apple shift to an in-house mapping database by 2018, reducing its reliance on third-party sources like TomTom.

At the time, Gurman said Apple did not believe that Google’s classic Street View interfaces were intuitive to users, and as a result, he said the company was exploring new ways to present that kind of imagery.

Google launched Street View way back in 2007, so if Apple is truly working on its own competing feature, then it will presumably have points of differences. Otherwise, it is certainly possible that the vehicle-collected data will only be used for storefront imagery or other underlying mapping improvements.

When Apple’s fleet of vans first hit the streets, it was speculated they could be the basis of an Apple Car. But those rumors quieted down after the vans were labeled with Apple Maps decals, and because Apple has shifted towards testing self-driving software with Lexus 450h SUVs near its headquarters in California.

It’s too early to say when Apple will fully take advantage of the data it has collected, but with parts of at least 80 percent of the United States now surveyed, the fruits of the labor could be witnessed sooner rather than later.

Earlier this month, Oracle patched a highly critical Java deserialization remote code execution vulnerability in its WebLogic Server component of Fusion Middleware that could allow attackers to easily gain complete control of a vulnerable server.

However, a security researcher, who operates through the Twitter handle @pyn3rd and claims to be part of the Alibaba security team, has now found a way using which attackers can bypass the security patch and exploit the WebLogic vulnerability once again.

WebLogic Server acts as a middle layer between the front end user interface and the backend database of a multi-tier enterprise application. It provides a complete set of services for all components and handles details of the application behavior automatically.

Initially discovered in November last year by Liao Xinxi of NSFOCUS security team, the Oracle WebLogic Server flaw (CVE-2018-2628) can be exploited with network access over TCP port 7001.

If exploited successfully, the flaw could allow a remote attacker to completely take over a vulnerable Oracle WebLogic Server. The vulnerability affects versions 10.3.6.0, 12.1.3.0, 12.2.1.2 and 12.2.1.3.

Since a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the original Oracle WebLogic Server vulnerability has already been made public on Github and someone has just bypassed the patch as well, your up-to-date services are again at risk of being hacked.

Although @pyn3rd has only released a short GIF (video) as a proof-of-concept (PoC) instead of releasing full bypass code or any technical details, it would hardly take a few hours or days for skilled hackers to figure out a way to achieve same.

Currently, it is unclear when Oracle would release a new security update to address this issue that has re-opened CVE-2018-2628 flaw.

In order to be at least one-step safer, it is still advisable to install April patch update released by Oracle, if you haven’t yet because attackers have already started scanning the Internet for vulnerable WebLogic servers.

Kuo has been one of the most prolific sources of rumors about Apple’s unreleased products and services since as early as 2010, when he was a senior analyst at industry publication DigiTimes. He briefly covered Apple for Concord Securities in 2011, before moving to KGI Securities in early 2012.

While he doesn’t have a perfect track record, our archive of Kuo’s research notes reveals several high-profile rumors that proved to be accurate. In March 2016, nearly two years prior to the iPhone X, for example, he said Apple was developing a new iPhone with a 5.8-inch OLED display, glass back, and metal frame.

Later in 2016, he shared a laundry list of predictions about the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, including the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, a new glossy Jet Black color option, stereo speakers, and improved water resistance.

Kuo also accurately forecasted the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, Apple Watch Series 2 with GPS, iPhone SE, Apple Pencil, 12-inch MacBook, MacBook Pro models with a Touch Bar and Touch ID, and the MacBook Pro with Retina display. In between, he’s shared tidbits like an iPod touch refresh with new colors and white front bezels.

While speculation has mounted about whether Apple had anything to do with Kuo’s decision to step down, given the company’s culture of secrecy, it is believed that his departure was a move planned several months ago.

Kuo has yet to publicly comment on the report, and it’s possible he may continue to cover Apple to at least some extent in the future.

The change means users will now see a banner at the top of their feed that lists links to a particular story from people they follow, and should prevent users from seeing multiple shared links to the same story in their timeline.

The update represents the latest move in an ongoing strategy to make the social media platform more news-centric, with recent experiments focusing on algorithmically curated timelines for major events, combining news reports with tweets by the public.

Twitter already shows live news broadcasts in a live-streaming window next to its timeline during major breaking news events. In 2016, the app also got moved to the News category in the App Store to highlight the change in direction for the company.

At least 25 people, including nine journalists, have been killed and dozens wounded after two explosions hit Kabul, according to Afghan health officials.

The blasts went off during rush hour on Monday morning in the Shash Darak area of the Afghan capital.

Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul, said the armed group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack.  

In the first explosion, a suicide bomber detonated himself close to the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the main Afghan intelligence agency, TOLO News quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying.

In another explosion that followed 20 minutes later, a second suicide bomber targeted emergency medical workers and journalists who had arrived at the scene.

The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee reported that nine journalists who rushed to cover the aftermath of the first explosion were killed in the second blast. 

A spokesperson for the Afghan health ministry said the attacks killed at least 25 people and wounded 45 others.

AFP news agency reported that its chief photographer in Kabul, Shah Marai, was among the fatalities.

#UPDATE Agence France-Presse’s chief photographer in Kabul, Shah Marai, has been killed.
He died in a blast that was targeting a group of journalists who had rushed to the scene of a suicide attack in the Afghan capital pic.twitter.com/rOa4rg24x9

— AFP news agency (@AFP) April 30, 2018

Afghanistan’s 1TV television channel also reported that its reporter, Ghazi Rasooli, and cameraman, Nowroz Ali Rajabi were killed in the attack.  

We have lost two of our staff members in today’s suicide bombing in #Kabul. Our reporter Ghazi Rasooli and cameraman Nowroz Ali Rajabi were covering an earlier suicide blast when they lost their lives. pic.twitter.com/Nnd8jGvIAB

— 1TVNewsAF (@1TVNewsAF) April 30, 2018

An Al Jazeera photographer was also injured in the incident.

TOLO News also reported that two other journalists were wounded in the second blast.

“It’s a very grim morning here,” Al Jazeera’s Glasse said describing the situation in the Afghan capital.

She added that there are many fortified streets near the site of the attack.

“There’s a lot of security in that area – it’s not far from NATO headquarters – and security has been beefed up around the Afghan capital, but clearly they haven’t been able to stop these kind of attacks.”

The explosions on Monday come just a week after a blast hit a voter registration centre in Kabul, killing at least 57 people and wounding more than 100 others.

Attacks have multiplied in recent days in advance of the long-delayed parliamentary and district council elections scheduled for October 20 this year.

“The series of attacks here in Kabul have made the Afghan capital most dangerous place in Afghanistan to be,” Al Jazeera’s Glasse said.

Armenia’s ruling party said it would not stop protest leader Nikol Pashinyan becoming interim prime minister if all opposition factions in parliament support his candidacy.

More than two weeks of anti-government protests forced the resignation of Republican Party veteran Serzh Sarksyan as prime minister, and the party said it will not put forward one of its own members to replace him – in a bid to calm tensions.

Pashinyan, a former journalist turned lawmaker, has said parliament must elect him prime minister on Tuesday when it votes.

He is so far the only person to put himself forward and, as of Sunday, had received the support of all opposition parties in parliament that hold 47 seats of the 105-seat legislature, where the Republicans have a majority.

After talks with Pashinyan on Sunday, parliamentary leader of the Republican Party, Vahram Baghdasaryan, said the party would not “impede the election of the people’s candidate” if all three opposition factions in parliament supported him.

Demonstrations resume

The announcement coincided with the resumption of protests in the capital, Yerevan, after a two-day moratorium during which demonstrations against the Republican Party and official corruption were held in smaller cities.

About 5,000 people gathered in a square in the centre of the capital on Sunday before setting off on a march.

In the streets of Yerevan, flag-draped demonstrators blocked intersections, sang songs, played music and chanted slogans, accusing the ruling party of clinging to power against the people’s will.

Sarkisian, who became prime minister on April 17 after serving a decade as president in what was seen by opponents as a power grab, resigned on Monday after 10 days of protests.

Protester Vigen Arabyan said the Republicans had no choice but to throw in the towel and back the hugely popular Pashinyan, 42.

“We simply cannot continue on this path,” the 51-year-old engineer told AFP news agency. “The country is going towards complete destruction if we keep going this way.”

‘Rats from a sinking ship’

Arut Khachatryan, a 17-year-old high school student, said: “We are witnessing a decisive moment.”

Pashinyan, who heads the small Civil Contract party, is the only candidate in the running for the premiership so far and insists only he can rid Armenia of corruption, poverty and nepotism.

He needs the backing of at least six lawmakers from the ruling Republican Party, which has 58 seats in parliament, to clinch victory on Tuesday.

Some analysts said they expected a number of Republicans to defect and give their votes to Pashinyan, sealing his victory.

“I am sure that at least six people from the Republican Party – like rats from a sinking ship – would vote for Pashinyan,” said analyst Ervand Bozoyan.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Sprint and T-Mobile, after years of going back and forth as to whether they are going to tie up two of the largest telecom providers in the U.S., have announced that the two companies have entered a merger agreement this morning.

The merger will be an all-stock transaction, and will now be subject to regulatory approval. That latter part is going to be its biggest challenge, because it will not only tie up the No. 3 and No. 4 carriers into the U.S. into a single unit, but also that international organizations hold significant stakes in both companies. SoftBank controls a majority of Sprint while Deutsche Telekom controls a significant chunk of T-Mobile. Following the administration’s intervention in the Broadcom-Qualcomm takeover attempt, it isn’t clear what will actually go through in terms of major mergers these days.

Bloomberg is reporting that Deutsche Telekom will have 42% ownership of the combined company, while SoftBank will own around 27% of the company.

As expected, the argument here is for the expansion of 5G networks as plans for that start to ramp up. T-Mobile argues in its announcement that it will help it be competitive with AT&T and Verizon as telecom companies start to roll out a next-generation 5G network, though it does in the end remove a carrier choice for end consumers in the U.S..

“The New T-Mobile will have the network capacity to rapidly create a nationwide 5G network with the breadth and depth needed to enable U.S. firms and entrepreneurs to continue to lead the world in the coming 5G era, as U.S. companies did in 4G,” T-Mobile said in a statement as part of the announcement. “The new company will be able to light up a broad and deep 5G network faster than either company could separately. T-Mobile deployed nationwide LTE twice as fast as Verizon and three times faster than AT&T, and the combined company is positioned to do the same in 5G with deep spectrum assets and network capacity.”

Both companies appeared to be finalizing the deal on Friday, when they set valuation terms and were preparing to announce the merger today. The deal values Sprint at an enterprise value of around $59 billion, with the combined company having an enterprise value of $146 billion. AT&T has a market cap of around $214 billion, while Verizon has a market cap of around $213 billion, as of Sunday.

The transaction, the companies said, is of course subject to regulatory approval. But, pending approval, it is expected to close “no later than the first half of 2019.”

Disclosure: Verizon is the parent company of Oath, which owns TechCrunch.

Kigali, Rwanda – Rwandan President Paul Kagame has repeated his harsh criticism of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for what he calls open bias against Africa, saying it has failed to mete out justice in any other part of the world.

“The ICC was supposed to address the whole world, but it ended up covering only Africa,” Kagame said on Saturday at a meeting with British-Sudanese telecoms tycoon and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.

“From the time of its inception, I said there was a fraud basis on which it was set up and how it was going to be used. I told people that this would be a court to try Africans, not people from across the world.

“And I don’t believe I have been proven wrong.”

Disproportionate targeting?

The permanent court in the Netherlands was established by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court treaty in 1998 in order to prosecute and punish individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.

It entered into force in 2012.

But in recent years a number of African countries have threatened or announced plans to withdraw from The Hague-based court over what they call the court’s disproportionate targeting of the continent.

To date, all but one of the ICC’s 10 investigations have been in Africa and its five convicted suspects are from Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Mali.

“There are many people across the world who should be tried by the court,” Kagame said.

“Some leaders from African countries who are being tried by the ICC, whatever they are being tried for, [their crimes] have been committed in partnership with other countries, which the ICC don’t try.”

‘Controlling tool’

Rwanda is not a party of the Rome Statute and Kagame himself has been a consistent and long-standing critic of the ICC, calling it in 2008 a “fraudulent institution”.

In later war, his stance was interpreted by some as a means to protect military commanders over their alleged support of rebel groups in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

However, Lonzen Rugira, a Rwandan political analyst, said Kagame’s criticism of the ICC was because of its “politicised agenda”.

“The ICC has become a tool for controlling Africa,” he said.

“Kagame believes that there should be a mechanism for victims to seek justice but that is not present with the ICC.

“Moreover, just because the ICC has a few black judges doesn’t mean they’re not susceptible to manipulation, rather their ‘blackness’ is a tool used to circumvent any criticism against the ICC, and that’s what Kagame is getting at.”

I entered the world of venture investing a dozen years ago.  Little did I know that I was embarking on a journey to master the art of balancing contradictions: building up experience and pattern recognition to identify outliers, emphasizing what’s possible over what’s actual, generating comfort and consensus around a maverick founder with a non-consensus view, seeking the comfort of proof points in startups that are still very early, and most importantly, knowing that no single lesson learned can ever be applied directly in the future as every future scenario will certainly be different.

I was fortunate to start my venture career at a fund specializing in funding “Frontier” technology companies. Real-estate was white hot, banks were practically giving away money, and VCs were hungry to fund hot startups.

I quickly found myself in the same room as mainstream software investors looking for what’s coming after search, social, ad-tech, and enterprise software. Cleantech was very compelling: an opportunity to make money while saving our planet.  Unfortunately for most, neither happened: they lost their money and did little to save the planet.

Fast forward a decade, after investors scored their wins in online lending, cloud storage, and on-demand, I find myself, again, in the same room with consumer and cloud investors venturing into “Frontier Tech”.  The are dazzled by the founders’ presentations, and proud to have a role in funding turning the seemingly impossible to what’s possible through science. However, what lessons did they take away from the Cleantech cycle? What should Frontier Tech founders and investors be thinking about to avoid the same fate?

Coming from a predominantly academic background, I was excited to be part of the emerging trend of funding founders leveraging technology to make how we generate, move, and consume our natural resources more efficient and sustainable. I was thrilled to be digging into technologies underpinning new batteries, photovoltaics, wind turbines, superconductors, and power electronics.  

To prove out their business models, these companies needed to build out factories, supply chains, and distribution channels. It wasn’t long until the core technology development became a small piece of an otherwise complex, expensive operation. The hot energy startup factory started to look and feel mysteriously like a magnetic hard drive factory down the street. Wait a minute, that’s because much of the equipment and staff did come from factories making components for PCs; but this time they were making products for generating, storing, and moving energy more renewably. So what went wrong?

Whether it was solar, wind, or batteries, the metrics were pretty similar: dollars per megawatt, mass per megawatt, or multiplying by time to get dollars and mass per unit energy, whether it was for the factories or the systems. Energy is pretty abundant, so the race was on to to produce and handle a commodity. Getting started as a real competitive business meant going BIG: as many of the metrics above depended on size and scale. Hundreds of millions of dollars of venture money only went so far.

The onus was on banks, private equity, engineering firms, and other entities that do not take technology risk, to take a leap of faith to take a product or factory from 1/10th scale to full-scale. The rest is history: most cleantech startups hit a funding valley of death.  They need to raise big money while sitting at high valuations, without a kernel of a real business to attract investors that write those big checks to scale up businesses.

Frontier Tech, like Cleantech, can be capital-intense. Whether its satellite communications, driverless cars, AI chips, or quantum computing; like Cleantech, there is relatively larger amounts of capital needed to take the startups the point where they can demonstrate the kernel of a competitive business.  In other words, they typically need at least tens of millions of dollars to show they can sell something and profitably scale that business into a big market. Some money is dedicated to technology development, but, like cleantech a disproportionate amount will go into building up an operation to support the business. Here are a couple examples:

• Satellite communications: It takes a few million dollars to demonstrate a new radio and spacecraft. It takes tens of millions of dollars to produce the satellites, put them into orbit, build up ground station infrastructure, the software, systems, and operations needed to serve fickle, enterprise customers. All of this while facing competition from incumbent or in-house efforts. At what point will the economics of the business attract a conventional growth investor to fund expansion? If Cleantech taught us anything, it’s that the big money would prefer to watch from the sidelines for longer than you’d think.
• Quantum compute: Moore’s law is improving new computers at a breakneck pace, but the way they get implemented as pretty incremental. Basic compute architectures date back to the dawn of computing, and new devices can take decades to find their way into servers. For example, NAND Flash technology dates back to the 80s, found its way into devices in the 90s, and has been slowly penetrating datacenters in the past decade. Same goes for GPUs; even with all the hype around AI. Quantum compute companies can offer a service direct to users, i.e., homomorphic computing, advanced encryption/decryption, or molecular simulations. However, that would one of the rare occasions where novel computing machine company has offered computing as opposed to just selling machines. If I had to guess; building the quantum computers will be relatively quick; building the business will be expensive.
• Operating systems for driverless cars: Tremendous progress has been made since Google first presented its early work in 2011. Dozens of companies are building software that do some combination of perception, prediction, planning, mapping, and simulations.  Every operator of autonomous cars, whether they are vertical like Zoox, or working in partnerships like GM/Cruise, have their own proprietary technology stacks. Unlike building an iPhone app, where the tools are abundant and the platform is well-understood, integrating a complete software module into an autonomous driving system may take up more effort than putting together the original code in the first place.

How are Frontier-Tech companies advantaged relative to their Cleantech counterparts? For starters, most aren’t producing a commodity: it’s easier to build a Frontier-tech company that doesn’t need to raise big dollars before demonstrating the kernel of an interesting business. On rare occasions, if the Frontier tech startup is a pioneer in its field, then it can be acquired for top dollar for the quality of its results and its team.

Recent examples are Salesforce’s acquisition of Metamind, GM’s acquisition of Cruise, and Intel’s acquisition of Nervana (a Lux investment). However, as more competing companies get to work on a new technology, the sense of urgency to acquire rapidly diminishes as the scarce, emerging technology quickly becomes widely available: there are now scores of AI, autonomous car, and AI chip companies out there. Furthermore, as technology becomes more complex, its cost of integration into a product (think about the driverless car example above) also skyrockets.  Knowing this likely liability, acquirers will tend to pay less.

Creative founding teams will find ways to incrementally build interesting businesses as they are building up their technologies.  

I encourage founders, and investors to emphasize the businesses they are building through their inventions.  I encourage founders to rethink plans that require tens of millions of dollars before being able to sell products, while warning founders not to chase revenue for the sake of revenue.  

I suggest they look closely at their plans and find creative ways to start penetrating, or building exciting markets, hence interesting businesses, with modest amounts of capital. I advise them to work with investors who, regardless of whether they saw how Cleantech unfolded, are convinced that their $$ can take the company to the point where it can engage customers with an interesting product with a sense for how it can scale into an attractive business.

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has accused the US of trying to divide Syria while ignoring international law by launching missiles into the country.

Lavrov made the accusations on Saturday while meeting his Turkish and Iranian counterparts in Moscow following their talks on the seven-year Syrian war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The meeting was meant to prepare the groundwork for the ninth round of Astana talks to be held next month in Kazakhstan, which will focus on political and humanitarian issues.

Russia, Iran and Turkey see themselves as guarantor states in negotiations between the Syrian opposition and government.

They say the Astana process, aimed at ending the violence in Syria, is the only way of reducing tensions.

‘Reformatting Middle East’

At the meeting, all three ministers agreed Syria must remain a sovereign and whole entity.

American statements about supporting the territorial integrity of Syria “are only words that, apparently, cover plans for reformatting the Middle East and plans for dividing Syria into parts”, Lavrov said, adding Russia, Iran and Turkey will work together to ensure that won’t happen. 

“While we are building options for peace, some of our other colleagues are trying to destroy the results of our joint constructive efforts, not even following the international law like in the recent operation of the US, UK and France against Syria,” Lavrov said.

The joint attack on April 14 targeted suspected chemical weapons infrastructure following an alleged gas attack by government forces on the formerly rebel-held town of Douma, outside Damascus.

Lavrov said the US-led missile strikes on Syria “seriously aggravated the situation”.

‘Destructive to peace’

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu noted it’s important to work with the UN to ensure the legitimacy of a political solution in Syria, as any military solution would be illegal and unsustainable.

However, differences have emerged over the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and whether he should stay in power.

The opposition in Syria – backed by the US, UK and France – have been adamant any political solution cannot include Assad, a view Turkey holds as well. 

“Turkey has always felt that Assad should not really be a part of Syria’s constitutional future,” reported Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands from Moscow.

“The Russians have always said that the opposition needs to get rid of these preconditions because they are destructive to Syria’s peace prospects.”

Talks between Russia, Iran and Turkey have regularly taken place since 2017 in the Kazakh capital, Astana, and are meant to complement the UN-led peace process.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies

North Korean state media has hailed as a “new milestone” the historic meeting between its leader and South Korea’s president, and their joint declaration to formally end the Korean War, and make the peninsula nuclear-free.

North Korea’s Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Saturday that both Pyongyang and Seoul “affirm the common goal of realising a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula through complete denuclearisation,” according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.

KCNA also said the summit paves the way for “a new era of peace and prosperity”.  

On Friday, the leaders of the two Koreas signed a joint statement after an historic summit that saw Kim Jong-un become the first North Korean leader to step into South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

The peace talks were held in Panmunjom village along the demilitarised zone.

At the White House, US President Donald Trump said he hopes to build on the success of the meeting, with his own summit with Kim in late May or early June.

“I think the responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of the President of the United States. I think I have a responsibility to see if I can do it,” he told reporters.

“This is beyond the United States. This is a world problem. And it is something I hope I am able to do for the world.”   

The Trump administration, however, maintains a meeting with the US and North Korean leaders will not occur unless concrete moves towards denuclearisation are clearly demonstrated.

But in recent days, Trump has significantly toned down his rhetoric against Kim, whom he once called “little rocket man”.

Now, he has referred to him as “very open” and “very honourable”.

‘Real North Korean concessions needed’

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres also praised the meeting, saying “many around the world were moved by the powerful imagery of the two leaders coming together to advance harmony and peace on the Korean Peninsula”.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he expected North Korea to take concrete steps towards carrying out its promises.

China’s foreign ministry also issued a statement saying it hoped all parties could maintain the momentum for dialogue and jointly promote the resolution process.

On Friday, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in pledged to sign a peace treaty later this year to officially halt the Korean War.

They also promised to pursue the end of nuclear weapons, although the statement did not include specific measures or a timetable.

Despite the widespread praise of the summit, questions remain as to North Korea’s willingness to forgo of its nuclear arsenal, which Pyongyang considers as a “treasured sword of justice”, wrote journalist Song Sang-ho in the Yonhap website.

Song pointed out that Pyongyang has even codified its “nuclear power status” in its constitution and other government documents.

“Friday’s inter-Korean summit declaration that included the phrase of ‘complete denuclearisation’ raised cautious optimism that Pyongyang could reorient its nuclear policy, but questions remain over whether it will bargain away its nukes.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Seoul, Robert Kelly, a Korea expert at Pusan National University, said the summit was a “good start”.

“It is certainly not where we were six months ago when we were talking about nuclear war,” Kelly said. 

“I think the real question going forward is whether the North Koreans actually do what they said they would do yesterday,” he said.

He pointed out that in the past declarations and promises collapsed because there were “no follow through”.

“And that’s where ultimately North Korea has to move. There has got to be some concessions from North Korea, or we are going to be back where we were a year ago,” Kelly said.

The charming robot at the heart of Disney’s Big Hero 6, Baymax, isn’t exactly realistic, but its puffy bod is an (admittedly aspirational) example of the growing field of soft robotics. And now Disney itself has produced a soft robot arm that seems like it could be a prototype from the movie.

Created by Disney Research roboticists, the arm seems clearly inspired by Baymax, from the overstuffed style and delicate sausage fingers to the internal projector that can show status or information to nearby people.

“Where physical human-robot interaction is expected, robots should be compliant and reactive to avoid human injury and hardware damage,” the researchers write in the paper describing the system. “Our goal is the realization of a robot arm and hand system which can physically interact with humans and gently manipulate objects.”

The mechanical parts of the arm are ordinary enough — it has an elbow and wrist and can move around the way many other robot arms do, using the same servos and such.

But around the joints are what look like big pillows, which the researchers call “force sensing modules.” They’re filled with air and can detect pressure on them. This has the dual effect of protecting the servos from humans and vice versa, while also allowing natural tactile interactions.

“Distributing individual modules over the various links of a robot provides contact force sensing over a large area of the robot and allows for the implementation of spatially aware, engaging physical human-robot interactions,” they write. “The independent sensing areas also allow a human to communicate with the robot or guide its motions through touch.”

Like hugging, as one of the researchers demonstrates:

Presumably in this case the robot (also presuming the rest of the robot) would understand that it is being hugged, and reciprocate or otherwise respond.

The fingers are also soft and filled with air; they’re created in a 3D printer that can lay down both rigid and flexible materials. Pressure sensors within each inflatable finger let the robot know whether, for example, one fingertip is pressing too hard or bearing all the weight, signaling it to adjust its grip.

This is still very much a prototype; the sensors can’t detect the direction of a force yet, and the materials and construction aren’t airtight by design, meaning they have to be continuously pumped full. But it still shows what they want it to show: that a traditional “hard” robot can be retrofitted into a soft one with a bit of ingenuity. We’re still a long way from Baymax, but it’s more science than fiction now.

This month’s app selection, outlined in the video and the post below, includes apps for managing and organizing your files, getting info about your Mac, accessing your favorite content quickly, and more. Many of the apps we’ve included this month were chosen by our forum members.

• DaisyDisk ($9.99) – DaisyDisk is an app that’s been around for quite some time, but it was just recently updated with extended support for Apple File System (APFS), the file system on macOS High Sierra. DaisyDisk is designed to show you all of the files on your Mac, so you can see what’s eating up your disk space. Using simple drag and drop gestures, you can delete unnecessary content, freeing up storage.
• Hazel ($32) – Hazel is a little bit more expensive than the typical Mac apps we feature, but it has a unique function — it automatically sorts and organizes all of your files. You can assign Hazel to watch folders on your Mac, such as the download folder, and using user-specified rules, Hazel will organize all incoming files into categories like Movies, Music, Pictures, Old Files, New Items, and more. Hazel can be used to open, archive, tag, rename, and upload files, and there are tools for cleaning up support files when you delete an app.
• Shortcut Bar ($8.99) – Shortcut Bar is a simple menu bar app that lets you access your favorite files, folders, apps, web bookmarks, and text snippets, essentially putting all of the files and apps you use most on your Mac right at your fingertips.
• Station (Free) – Station is an app that’s designed to house and aggregate all of your web applications in one easy to access location. Instead of having dozens of tabs open with things like Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, and Slack, you can relocate them all to Station for quicker, more streamlined access. Station is, essentially, a web browser that has a more thoughtful layout for accessing web apps.
• iStat Menus (Free) – iStat Menus is a fairly well-known app that’s worth checking out if you haven’t already. It provides a wealth of information about your Mac that’s accessible through your menu bar. You can track battery life and health, processor usage, memory usage, network details, weather information, and more, and it can send notifications based on your custom parameters. Want to know if your CPU usage has exceeded 60 percent for over 10 seconds or if your internet is down? iStat Menus can do that. It’s free to download, but unlocking full functionality costs $9.99.

Do you have favorite must-have Mac apps that we haven’t highlighted yet? Let us know what they are in the comments and we might feature them in a future video. Many of this month’s picks came from our forum members.

For more of our Mac app picks, make sure to check out our lists from February and March.