Porsche is readying its Mission E for launch, with a 2019 target sales date. The all-electric Tesla Model S competitor has a lot of car fans excited, and has been drawing covetous looks since the concept’s unveiling back in 2015. Now that launch is drawing closer, however, we have some new info about the car, how it charges and its performance.

Porsche EV lead Stefan Weckbach told a group of journalists that Porsche, unlike Tesla, is developing its car as a performance vehicle that can maintain top speed and reproduce acceleration reliably, specifically calling out Tesla’s vehicles’ ability to do 0 to 60 in under 3 seconds “only twice – the third attempt will fail,” reports Autoblog.

He’s likely referring to a software-based restriction on use of Tesla’s Launch Control and aggressive acceleration features, which was limited both in terms of total uses and times it could be used successively to limit its impact on vehicle powertrain parts, as well as the Tesla’s battery. Tesla lifted this limitation in response to customer complaints, however.

Besides throwing some mildly outdated shade Tesla’s way, Weckbach also talked about how the vehicle will quick-charge, aging back 250 miles of range during a 20 minute charging session, though that will take a lot of infrastructure expansion in the U.S. and abroad. Tesla’s investment in its Supercharger network begins to look like a smart hedge and early lead in this context.

Porsche’s Mission E arrives next year, as mentioned, so it’s basically time to get excited. Tesla fans likely be swayed by cheap shots at their beloved cars, but a battle on performance merits does look to be brewing.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has offered to recognise the Taliban as a legitimate political group, as part of a proposed process he said could lead to talks aimed at ending more than 16 years of war. 

Ghani’s offer on Wednesday, made at the start of an international conference aimed at creating a platform for peace talks, adds to a series of signals from both the Western-backed government and the Taliban suggesting a greater willingness to consider dialogue. 

Ghani proposed a ceasefire and prisoner release as part of a range of options, including new elections involving the armed group, and a constitutional review as part of a pact with the Taliban. 

“We are making this offer without preconditions in order to lead to a peace agreement,” Ghani said in opening remarks at the conference, attended by officials from about 25 countries involved in the so-called Kabul Process. 

“The Taliban are expected to give input to the peace-making process, the goal of which is to draw the Taliban, as an organisation, to peace talks,” he said. 

The comments represented a significant shift for Ghani, who, in the past, has regularly called the Taliban “terrorists” and “rebels”, although he has also offered to talk to parts of the movement that accepted peace. 

The Taliban, fighting to return to power after its 2001 removal by US-led forces, has offered to begin talks with the US, but has, so far, refused direct discussions with Kabul. It was unclear whether the group would be prepared to shift its stance, despite growing international pressure. 

“I think that what they are saying is that the door is still open. They have shown a softness in their stand,” said political analyst Habib Wadark.

“Not just the Taliban, but the Afghan government and its international counterparts, and I think it is a perfect time not for a peace deal to be struck at this stage but probably a temporary ceasefire, which can then pave the path of a sustainable peace in the long term,” he told Al Jazeera.

Ghani, who recently helped launch the latest stage of a major, regional gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, said the momentum for peace was building from neighbouring countries that increasingly saw the necessity of a stable Afghanistan. 

“The Taliban show awareness of these contextual shifts and seem to be engaged in a debate on the implications of acts of violence for their future,” he said. 

Political office 

Ghani said a framework for peace negotiations should be created with the Taliban recognised as a legitimate group, with their own political office to handle negotiations in Kabul or another agreed location. 

Taliban officials have acknowledged they have faced pressure from friendly countries to accept talks, and said their recent offers to talk to the US reflected concern that they could be seen to be standing in the way of peace. 

Ghani said the process would be accompanied by coordinated diplomatic support, including a global effort to persuade neighbouring Pakistan, which Kabul has regularly accused of aiding the Taliban, of the advantages of a stable Afghanistan. 

He renewed an offer of talks with Pakistan, which rejects the accusations and points to the thousands of its citizens who have been killed by armed groups over the years.

In return for Ghani’s offer, the Taliban would have to recognise the Afghan government and respect the rule of law, he said. 

In addition, Taliban prisoners could be released and their names removed from international blacklists, while security arrangements could be made for the Taliban members agreeing to join a process of reconciliation. Former fighters and refugees could be reintegrated and provided with jobs. 

The US last year stepped up its military assistance to Afghanistan, notably through a sharp increase in air attacks, with the aim of breaking a stalemate with the fighters and forcing them to the negotiating table. 

While the US military says the strategy has hit the Taliban hard, the group still controls or contests much of the country and continues to inflict severe casualties on Afghan forces. 

The Taliban also claimed responsibility for two major attacks in Kabul last month that killed or wounded hundreds of civilians.

LinkedIn wasn’t built for low-skilled job seekers, so Facebook is barging in. Today Facebook is rolling out job posts to 40 more countries to make itself more meaningful to people’s lives while laying the foundation for a lucrative business.

Businesses will be able to post job openings to a Jobs tab on their Page, Jobs dashboard, Facebook Marketplace, and the News Feed that they can promote with ads. Meanwhile, job seekers can discover openings, auto-fill applications with their Facebook profile information, edit and submit their application, and communicate via Messenger to schedule interviews.

TechCrunch first spotted Facebook testing the Jobs tab in late 2016 before it rolled out in the U.S. and Canada last year. Facebook partnered with ZipRecruiter to bring more job openings to its platform. And now the features are rolling out in Brazil, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain on iOS, Android, and the web.

“One in four people in the US have searched for or found a job using Facebook” writes Facebook’s VP of Local Alex Himel. “But 40% of US small businesses report that filling jobs was more difficult than they expected. We think Facebook can play a part in closing this gap.”

Now users in the new countries will be able to use the Jobs dashboard found in the Facebook web sidebar or mobile app’s More section to discover jobs using filters like proximity, industry, and whether they want a full-time or part-time gig.

The Job posts rollout could help Facebook steal some of the $1.1 billion in revenue LinkedIn earned for Microsoft in Q4 2017. But the bigger opportunity is developing a similar business where companies pay to promote their job openings and land hires, but for lower-skilled local companies in industries like retail and food service.

In this space, job applicants often don’t have glowing resumes and education histories that look good on LinkedIn. They might not even be on the site, and if they are, they probably don’t spend much time there. But they may already have their limited professional experience listed and they spend a ton of time casually browsing the site. This lets Facebook connect them with job even if they weren’t actively seeking a position, and quickly apply to lots of different positions by piggybacking off their profile info.

“Troy, the owner of Striper Sniper Tackle in North Carolina had trouble finding people with the specific skills he needed until he posted the job on his Facebook Page. He received 27 applications immediately, and hired 10 people” Facebook writes. Those jobs probably wouldn’t appeal to LinkedIn users, and some of those who applied probably didn’t think they were job hunting when they opened Facebook.

“Since 2011, Facebook has invested more than $1 billion to help local businesses grow and help people find jobs” Himel writes., referencing the Community Boost program that trains businesses and job seekers to better use the Internet…including Facebook. “In 2018 we plan to invest the same amount in more teams, technology, and new programs. Because when businesses succeed, communities thrive.”

The challenge for Facebook may be convincing users that they can still be themselves on the social network. Facebook stresses that potential employers can only see what’s public on an applicant’s profile. But some users still might be paranoid that their party pics or niche hobbies could scare away hirers.

The move again proves how powerful being a default daily destination is. Over the past few years, Facebook built a giant business by becoming an alternative to YouTube where people serendipitously discover videos instead of purposefully coming to watch certain ones. That same strategy could make Facebook a massive gateway to local jobs. And it’s coming at a time when Facebook is desperate to prove it can be meaningful to people and make their lives better, rather than just being a time sink.

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Third-party apps snoww, Slopes, Squaw Alpine, Snocru, and Ski Tracks have each been updated to take advantage of custom workout APIs released in watchOS 4.2 that enable tracking of specialized metrics:

• Total vertical descent and horizontal distance
• Number of runs
• Average and maximum speeds
• Total time spent
• Calories burned

The apps integrate with the Activity app on Apple Watch Series 3, including credit towards Activity rings, while workout information can also be recorded to the Health app on an iPhone with user permission.

We’re thrilled with the updates Apple Watch Series 3 and watchOS 4.2 allow us to make” said Eddy Healey, developer of snoww. “We designed snoww thinking about quick interactions and glances while out on the mountain, so these updates have helped us make it easy to record accurate, relevant metrics as well as create a fun and social experience for our users.

The updated apps are now available on the App Store and require watchOS 4.2 or later. The ski and snowboard tracking is limited to Apple Watch Series 3 models, which are the only ones with a built-in altimeter.

TechCrunch‘s Katie Roof has shared a closer look at some of the updated apps.

Square posted a largely successful fourth quarter that showed continuing growth with its Cash App — with users spending around $90 million on its Cash card in December, putting it on a potentially $1 billion run rate.

That would offer another significant avenue for Square to snap up additional customers as it looks to chip away at the alternatives available for directly sending cash between users. While popularized by Venmo, many companies have gone after this space — including Apple, where you can send money over iMessage — and its massive popularity through services abroad are showing the appeal for a company like Square. The rest of the report was largely above analyst expectations, though it got a slight dig for missing a near-term forecast for its earnings.

Square is looking less and less like just the point-of-sale system that it was when it went public, though that still accounts for a significant portion of its business. But as it diversifies into new services revenue, especially with new products like Square Capital and the Cash App, it’s finding new ways to sell a growth (and stability) story to Wall Street that’s so far delivered for its shares over the past year. Those subscription- and services-based components generated $253 million in 2017, according to the company.

For the most part, the stock went nowhere after today’s earnings report, which more or less equates to a continuing run that’s sent its shares skyrocketing in the past year. Square’s shares have risen more than 150 percent over the past 12 months, sending it to a valuation north of $17.8 billion — a valuation wildly higher than its initial public offering when there were many questions about whether it could be a successful business.

Here’s the final slash line:

• Q4 adjusted earnings: 8 cents per share, compared to analyst expectations of 7 cents per share.
• Q4 adjusted revenue: $283 million, compared to Wall Street estimates of $266.3 million (up 47 percent year-over-year).
• Q1 revenue forecast: $292.5 million midpoint, compared to analyst estimates of $271.9 million.
• Q1 adjusted earnings forecast: 4 cents per share (midpoint), compared to analyst estimates of 8 cents per share.
• FY2017 subscription and services- based revenue (including Caviar, Cash and Square Capital): $253 million (up 95 percent year-over-year).
• Q4 gross payment volume: $17.9 billion (up 31 percent year-over-year).
• Cash App users: 7 million monthly active customers.

For one of the first times, as Square recently opened up bitcoin buying and selling in its Cash App, cryptocurrency operations are now falling under the “risk factors” for the company — a set of boilerplate statements made about the general risks it faces that it thinks it needs to disclose to investors. A significant part of that risk seems to stem from the evolving state of regulation around cryptocurrency. There’s a pretty meaty section in the risk factors in its main filing, which we’ve included below:

We recently introduced a feature to the Cash App that permits our customers to buy and sell bitcoin. Bitcoin is not considered legal tender or backed by any government, and it has experienced price volatility, technological glitches and various law enforcement and regulatory interventions. We do not believe that the bitcoin platform involves offering participants securities that are subject to the registration or other provisions of the federal or state securities laws. We also do not believe the feature subjects us to regulation under the federal securities laws, including as a broker-dealer or an investment adviser, or registration under the federal commodities laws. However, the regulation of cryptocurrency and crypto platforms is still an evolving area and it is possible that a court or a federal or state regulator could disagree with one or more of these conclusions. If we fail to comply with regulations or prohibitions applicable to us, we could face regulatory or other enforcement actions and potential fines and other consequences. Further, we might not be able to continue operating the feature, at least in current form, and to the extent that the feature is viewed by the market as a valuable asset to Square, the price of our Class A common stock could decrease. Additionally, there is no specific accounting guidance in U.S. GAAP covering accounting for cryptocurrencies, which means the accounting can be complex and subject to challenge or scrutiny. The final conclusions on the accounting treatment for our cryptocurrency transactions could affect the presentation of our results of operations.

Square’s revenue continued to grow at a pretty decent clip year-over-year, and we’re starting to see some trends of it beginning to look more and more healthy even as it looks to diversify its business beyond just its point-of-sale through services like the Cash App, its meal delivery service Caviar and Square Capital. Subscription revenue — which includes those services — accounted for $253 million in revenue, and Square Capital in the fourth quarter had 47,000 business loans totaling $305 million.

Featured Image: (Photo by Louis Ascui/Fairfax Media via Getty Images)/Getty Images