Don’t like the idea of your baby guzzling down liquid candy all day? It may surprise you to find corn syrup is the main ingredient in most infant formulas in the U.S. That’s where Bobbie, a Bay Area-based baby formula delivery startup promising only wholesome ingredients hopes to fill in.

Just go down the baby food aisle of any supermarket in America and start reading the ingredients and you’ll likely find corn syrup, soy bean oil, glucose syrup, maltodextrin and palm oil at the top. Even “organic” options often add these ingredients.

While it’s high fructose corn syrup we should be most concerned with when it comes to diabetes (and some doctors might even recommend adding some sort of syrup to your baby’s diet to combat constipation), corn syrup is not something some parents may want their baby guzzling down all day.

Touting itself as “European” style, Bobbie’s first product features fresh, grass-fed cows milk as the main ingredient. What it does not include, however, is key for the concerned parent. There’s zero corn syrup, maltodextrin or other artificial sugars or unhealthy oils.

Of course, some baby’s might not be able to stomach the lactose from bovine sources but grass-fed and corn syrup-free is music to the ears of many parents (me included) who’ve resorted to ordering bulk from Germany just to avoid feeding our kids Snickers in a bottle.

Yes, it seems crazy to order all the way from Europe when there are so many choices here in the U.S. – and there are some formula manufacturers here making an effort to offer better options – but finding something that meets the simple standard of no sugar, corn syrup or processed oils in the baby food is weirdly difficult.

The other nugget Bobbie provides is delivery. Heaven knows every second is precious when you are a new parent. Delivery can be an especially big help in maintaining some semblance of order in those early days. Sure, Amazon delivers many baby things — it even ships the popular, German-based Hipp brand of formula — but it comes at a premium price and will only ship in bulk.

You can also get the European brands delivered straight from sites like Organic Start, Huggable and a number of others easily Googled. But for those wanting something local, slightly less expensive and with presumably less of a carbon footprint than shipping from another continent, Bobbie is here for you (and we’re told will be delivered with a soft knock on the door, in case baby is sleeping).

The company was founded by two San Francisco moms and former Airbnb operation leaders Laura Modi and Sarah Hardy. Both found out how hard it was, after returning from maternity leave, to pump each day while keeping up with the demands of the job. However, neither of them liked the formula options they found at the grocery store for their own little broods.

Modi and Hardy thought it was time to give parents a more local choice in healthy formula. The two founded the company in 2018 and pulled in $2.5 million in funding last year from Bolt Capital, Nextview Ventures, Lakehouse, and Precursor while Modi was pregnant, closing the round a week before giving birth to her baby boy.

Bobbie will (appropriately) begin taking orders this Mother’s Day. Unfortunately, Bobbie only delivers to the Bay Area for now. However, those interested can order one 400 g trial box for $27, which should make about 22 bottles at 6 ounces per bottle, according to a company spokesperson. You can also sign up for the subscription package for $23 per box.

Bobbie Baby – Evolving the conversation of parenthood from Laura Modi on Vimeo.

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1. Uber opens at a disappointing $42 per share

At long last, it’s lift-off for Uber .

After pricing its initial public offering at $45 per share — at the bottom end of the range it set previously — to raise $8.1 billion, the transportation company began trading today on the New York Stock Exchange, and the shares opened at $42.

2. Jeff Bezos aims Blue Origin at the Moon

Bezos took the stage in front of select members of the media, executives, government officials and a gaggle of middle schoolers to reveal new details of his plan to get to the Moon by 2024.

3. Flaws in a popular GPS tracker leak real-time locations and can remotely activate its microphone

The Chinese-manufactured white-label location tracker, rebranded and sold by more than a dozen companies — including Pebbell by HoIP Telecom, OwnFone Footprint and SureSafeGo — contains security flaws, which security researchers say are so severe the device should be recalled.

4. Apple CEO Tim Cook talks WWDC student program, coding initiatives and SAP

We talk to the Apple CEO about coding literacy, the SAP partnership and some other interesting topics. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

5. Justice Department charges Chinese hacker for 2015 Anthem breach

U.S. prosecutors have brought charges against a Chinese national for his alleged involvement in the data breach at health insurance giant Anthem announced in 2015 that resulted in the theft of 78.8 million records.

6. Smartphone shipments hit a five-year low in North America

That’s bad, but also in line with what we’ve been seeing globally.

7. Facebook AR/VR product head Hugo Barra is being replaced

After initially being hired to lead the whole VR division, Barra will now be leading global AR/VR partnerships, while Erick Tseng, Facebook’s director of product management, will be replacing Barra in his most recent role leading AR/VR product management.

Uber’s much heralded public offering has arrived not so much with a bang as with a whimper, thanks largely to the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.

Overnight, the U.S. government made good on the threat from President Donald Trump to hike tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25 percent up from 10 percent.

As a result, stock markets slid further on Friday and their decline hit Uber’s initial public offering. The company’s shares began trading at $42.54, below its initial pricing of $45 per share.

At its initial pricing, Uber was valued at $75.5 billion, below the $120 billion price that Wall Street thought the company would fetch late last year, but still among the biggest public offerings in history. Only Facebook’s $81 billion public offering and the whopping $169 billion debut of Alibaba were bigger, according to a Dealogic analysis cited by Business Insider.

Uber’s historic public offering — which was designed to raise at least $90 billion for the ride-hailing giant — was no match for the equally historic struggle between the U.S. and China’s emerging economic superpower.

The rising tariffs were designed to hit business equipment, but will also affect prices on some $40 billion in consumer goods — ranging from clothes to furniture, refrigerators, washers and dryers.

Trump boosted tariffs after China reneged on certain concessions it had made during the trade negotiations. Chiefly, the U.S. was looking for written commitments from the Chinese government that it would provide less direct support to its state owned enterprises and loosen restrictions on U.S. companies operating in the country.

Uber’s disappointing debut can’t be chalked up to trade woes alone. Its immediate American rival, Lyft, has seen its stock decline precipitously since its opening at nearly $79 per share. Lyft is now trading at around $55 per share.

Yesterday, Lyft reported its first earnings as a public company, losing $1.14 billion on $776 million in revenue.

While Lyft is focused on consumer transportation, Uber has expanded to include freight shipping and meal delivery as part of its attempts to become an all-in-one hub for consumer and business logistics.

That expansion has come at a cost. The company may have generated revenues of $11.3 billion in 2018, but it operated at a $3 billion loss for the year. And Uber is deeply in the red. With deficits reaching nearly $8 billion by the end of 2018, as MarketWatch points out.

Trade wars, it seems, trump transportation disruption.

The sports-focused streaming service fuboTV will soon follow the rest of the industry by offering its own free and ad-supported streaming service, in addition to its paid subscription, sometime later this year. The news was exclusively shared with The Wrap (paywalled) in an interview with fuboTV co-founder and CEO David Gandler.

FuboTV confirmed the accuracy of the report to TechCrunch, but declined to provide further details about its forthcoming plans.

Gandler characterized its ad-supported video plans as being “a little bit smaller and more straightforward” than others on the market, but said the company believes it will help fuboTV’s profitability.

The company has been steadily expanding its streaming service beyond sports over the past couple of years, with deals to add channels to its lineup including Cheddar, CBSN, CBS Sports Network, The CW, Pop, and others. Last year, it also launched an “Extra” tier which offers other lifestyle and entertainment channels like BBC World News, Cooking Channel, DIY Network, Game Show Network, Sony Movie Channel, BabyTV, Revolt, INSP, as well as streaming channels like Stadium and People TV, among others.

The cord cutting news site Cord Cutters News and The Streamable both earlier reported some of these networks would come to fuboTV’s free streaming service, but the company tells us that’s not accurate.

FuboTV hasn’t yet detailed its plans for the ad-supported content, but it will face several rivals including Roku’s TV and movies hub, The Roku Channel; Walmart-owned Vudu’s “Movies on Us;” Amazon-owned IMDb’s Freedive; Sinclair’s STIRR; Viacom’s Pluto TV and others.

To clarify the earlier reports, a fuboTV spokesperson told us that  “fuboTV believes in the future of pay TV and we are looking at launching an ad-supported channel not a platform.” They said original programming would be a part of this channel.

Related to its efforts in ad-supported content, FuboTV recently hired Sling TV ad sales exec Chris Flatley, who will assume the role of VP of Ad Sales. He will report to Chief Strategy Officer Hanna Brown and will be based in fuboTV’s NYC headquarters.

The Wrap had also reported that fuboTV will debut a minute-long ad break called “Sports Break,” which will include short-form original content in between two ads in Q3 2019; and it noted fuboTV’s plans for original content. The ad-supported content will debut in either Q3 or Q4, its report said.

FuboTV reported in October 2018 it had grown to nearly 250,000 subscribers — or more than double the 100K it had in October 2017. It also claimed an annualized revenue rate run rate of $102 million in September 2018, compared to $28 million September 2017. At the beginning of 2019, the service raised prices on legacy subscribers by $10 per month, bringing them in line with the $44.99 per month paid by new subscribers.

 

 

Technology is very much in the business of, quite literally, changing the world. When I was deciding whether to write for TechCrunch, I tried to imagine a human life on this planet, in 20 or 30 years, that would not have been dramatically impacted in one way or another by the new technologies we’re creating today.

I couldn’t picture such a person, so I decided this ongoing series on tech ethics was the right thing to do with my time.

Below is the second part of my interview with Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a brilliant young author, activist, and the first Black woman in history to hold a faculty position in theoretical cosmology.

Her work critically analyzing the politics of the science world seems particularly salient to the tech world generally and to the world of tech ethics in particular: for example, Stanford recently launched an enormous new initiative in ethical technology, the “Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI),” which boasts plans for a billion dollar investment in making AI “representative of humanity.”

Yet among the 121 HAI faculty members initially announced this March, it has been much discussed that the overwhelming majority were white, most were male, and not a single one was Black. In part one of my dialogue with Prescod-Weinstein, we discussed decolonization and intersectionality; here I’ll begin by asking her about inclusion.

Greg E.: How is the science world doing, in terms of creating an inclusive culture?

Chanda P.W.: I’ve got mixed feelings about the question of inclusion. We need to ask ourselves what our aims are and where we’re going with this. I don’t necessarily think that tokens solve the problem.

At long last, it’s lift-off for Uber. After pricing its initial public offering at $45 per share, at the bottom end of the range it set previously, to raise $8.1 billion, transportation startup began trading today on the New York Stock Exchange, and the shares opened at $42, down from the IPO price.

Ahead of Uber finally making its debut, the company had an indication price that went as low as $42 ahead of live trading. With the overall market in a slump this week over trade woes with China, it’s a challenging time to list, to say the least.

Uber had raised $28.5 billion as a private company from no less than 166 different backers, with its last valuation in the region of $75 billion. The $82.4 billion valuation that it finally settled on for the IPO (selling 180 million shares at $45/share) is definitely up from that, but far from the lofty projections of $120 billion that banks and analysts that floated in the months leading up to today.

The figures nevertheless cement Uber, alongside Alibaba and Facebook, as one of the most valuable tech IPOs in history, and a major beacon for breaking ground in a new area of tech, transportation.

But if it is the sheer scale and potential of the Uber that catapulted it to such financial heights (real and imaginary), it’s the bare financials that have tempered some of those notions.

On one side, Uber essentially created and currently dominates the market for on-demand transportation, which started with the premise of connecting drivers with passengers by way of an app that tracked the location fo both, but eventually evolved into a wider two-sided marketplace ambition that brings together different modes of transportation — including bikes, public busses and more — with human passengers, as well as the movement of other goods like food, all on a global scale.

That model has propelled Uber to 93 million active platform consumers (from 70 million a year ago) and 17 million trips per day across 700 cities on six continents, along with a lot of high hopes from others like PayPal — which are making very late-stage, strategic investments to bank on what it believes could shape up to be a lucrative e-commerce empire in the years to come.

But Uber’s prospects are not without competition — which includes a host of more regional players like Lyft, Gett, Heetch, MyTaxi, Bolt and more — and not without controversy. Even as it goes public, the company is dealing with high-profile driver protests, lawsuits and ongoing regulatory pressures, not to mention a bigger cloud over its business practices that has hovered for years that the company has worked to dispel.

Even today, during the iconic bell ringing, there was a notable absence: former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick, who was ousted over the controversies around business practices but still sits on the board, was not up there — although he did show up at the NYSE for the event.

Outside, meanwhile, protestors against the company were also making their voices heard.

On the pure metric of profit and loss, Uber’s been firmly in the latter column, most recently posting a loss of some $1 billion in the last quarter on revenues of $3 billion -$3.1 billion, versus $2.6 billion a year ago.

Today’s listing is a small pause on the bigger question of how and if Uber will ever turn that boat around. It has made some significant shifts, such as divesting certain regional assets and reducing some of the incentive payments and discounts it made to drivers around the world to lure them to its platform; and under current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, it has made a concerted effort to play nice on a number of fronts. Khosrowshahi acknowledged the new set of challenges that staff would be facing as of today in a memo he sent out this morning:

“As we move from a private to a public company, our jobs will no doubt become harder and all eyes will be on us. We’ll have an even deeper responsibility to our customers, to our shareholders, to our cities, and to each other. With every share purchased, someone else will join us as a co-owner of Uber — and we’ll gain another person to whom we owe a duty to always ‘do the right thing, period.’

“Remember: while the public markets will keep their version of the “score” and the value of what we build, our true north will be determined over the long term. We will go through periods when we will be misunderstood, as well as periods when we will be hailed as heroes. It’s during those days, regardless of the ups and downs, that we should focus on our work: on creating opportunity, on moving the world, and relentlessly innovating and executing.”

But the big question will still remain of whether all these changes and the recast approach will be enough, and whether — now that it’s listed — public investors will be patient enough. At least in the short term, the performance of its smaller rival, Lyft, which largely operates on similar metrics and business model to Uber, might give some pause: it is currently trading at around $55, well below its debut of $78.29 on March 29.

Grizzled TechCrunch reporter Matt Burns was on site at yesterday’s big Blue Origin reveal, but if you’re reading this right now, odds are you weren’t. It was a small gathering, and Jeff Bezos, who tends to be fairly secret for such a public billionaire, opted not to live stream the fairly intimate press conference.

The full event is now online, however. You can check that out right here:

The TLDW of all of it is that, well, Earth f*****g rules, man. It’s totally the best planet in the solar system, at least so far as sustaining life is concerned. As such, we’re going to be dependent on this little blue marble for a long while, even as human population and energy consumption push its resources to the brink.

Bezos unveiled some pretty sci-fi sounding plans for off-world industries. In the meantime, however, Blue Origin says it can help the U.S. get back to the moon, with help from its new Blue Moon lunar lander. Bezos says the company can deliver the hardware to NASA by 2024.

A year ago, Amazon -owned Audible announced a deal with Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine to develop exclusive audio productions for Audible Originals — the company’s entertainment offering which features audio content that’s longer than podcasts, but shorter than audiobooks. Now, the first set of these Hello Sunshine original productions are being announced, including performances from music business matriarch Sophia Chang, judge Rosemarie Aquilina, and comedian/activist Maysoon Zayid.

Like Hello Sunshine’s other efforts, the Audible Originals focus on highlighting female storytelling, and join the brand’s other projects across books, film, TV, podcasts, and streaming services like Apple TV+ and Hulu. In addition, last year Audible and Hello Sunshine collaborated to launch a showcase of Audible audiobooks, selected by Reese’s Book Club, which similarly focuses on strong, but complex female characters.

The Audible Original written and performed by Chang, “Baddest Bitch in the Room,” has her telling the story of growing up as the daughter of Korean immigrants in the suburbs of Vancouver, later falling in love with hip-hop music, then starting her career in the music business, where she influenced the careers of major artists, including the Wu Tang Clan.

Judge Aquilina performs “Magnificent Things,” where she talks about her unusual journey to becoming the judge who presided over the trial of USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. And Maysoon Zayid performs “Limping on the Edge,” which tells her story of being a Muslim comedian with cerebral palsy, and how she uses her platform for her activism.

“We’re honored to have the opportunity to work with Sophia Chang, Rosemarie Aquilina, and Maysoon Zayid on their audio memoirs,” said Charlotte Koh, Head of Digital Media & Unscripted at Hello Sunshine, in a statement. “Each of these singular women have pursued their dreams with conviction, achieved success in the face of improbable odds, and are redefining societal norms around female identity and power. We’re also deeply appreciative of our friends at Audible for working with us to create these incredible listening experiences and providing these women with a premium service that commands a wide and highly engaged audience,” she added.

The launch comes at a time when the Hello Sunshine brand is on the rise thanks to its various high-profile projects, which include HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” and forthcoming video efforts like Hulu’s “Little Fires Everywhere,” and Apple TV+’s “Are You Sleeping” and “The Morning Show.” The company has a number of films in the works, as well, including “Legally Blonde 3” and those that are being developed from Reese’s Book Club picks, like “Where the Crawdads Sing,” and “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.”

Meanwhile, Hello Sunshine’s collaboration with Audible gives its parent Amazon a connection to the media company, which could help it in other areas of its business — like Prime Video potentially, Amazon Books, and Amazon Video’s marketplace for film and TV, which benefits from sales of popular titles.

Amazon, by way of its subsidiary Audible, also gains a noteworthy set of audio exclusives at a time when major streaming services like Spotify and Pandora are focusing on podcasting and audio. In addition, the deal indirectly helps boost Amazon’s connected speaker business, as it offers Echo owners the ability to stream exclusive original content from Audible.

The new Audible Original programs will debut starting in late 2019 and early 2020, the company says.

In security, nothing is “unhackable.” When it’s claimed, security researchers see nothing more than a challenge.

Enter the latest findings from Pen Test Partners, a U.K.-based cybersecurity firm. Their latest project was ripping apart the “unhackable” eyeDisk, an allegedly secure USB flash drive that uses iris recognition to unlock and decrypt the device.

eyeDisk raised over $21,000 in its Kickstarter campaign last year and began shipping devices in March.

There’s just one problem: it’s anything but “unhackable.”

Pen Test Partners researcher David Lodge found the device’s backup password — to access data in the event of device failure or a sudden eye-gouging accident — could be easily obtained using a software tool able to sniff USB device traffic.

“That string in red, that’s the password I set on the device. In the clear. Across an easy to sniff bus,” he said in a blog post detailing his findings. The password is

Worse, he said, the device’s real password can be picked up even when the wrong password has been entered. Lodge explained this as the device revealing its password first, then validating it against whatever password the user submitted before the unlock password is sent.

Lodge said anyone using one of these devices should use additional encryption on the device.

The researcher disclosed the flaw to eyeDisk, which promised a fix, but has yet to release it. eyeDisk did not return a request for comment.

The UK’s data protection watchdog has issued the government department responsible for collecting taxes with a final enforcement notice, after an investigation found HMRC had collected biometric data from millions of citizens without obtaining proper consent.

HMRC has 28 days from the May 9 notice to delete any Voice ID records where it did not obtain explicit consent to record and create a unique biometric voiceprint linked to the individual’s identity. 

The Voice ID system was introduced in January 2017, with HMRC instructing callers to a helpline to record a phrase to use their voiceprint as a password. The system soon attracted criticism for failing to make it clear that people did not have to agree to their biometric data being recorded by the tax office.

In total some seven million UK citizens have had voiceprints recorded via the system. HMRC will now have to delete the majority of these records (~five million voiceprints) — only retaining biometric data where it has fully informed consent to do so.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) investigation into Voice ID was triggered by a complaint by privacy advocacy group Big Brother Watch — which said more than 160,000 people opted out of the system after its campaign highlighted questions over how the data was being collected.

Announcing the conclusion of its probe last week, the ICO said it had found the tax office unlawfully processed people’s biometric data.

“Innovative digital services help make our lives easier but it must not be at the expense of people’s fundamental right to privacy. Organisations must be transparent and fair and, when necessary, obtain consent from people about how their information will be used. When that doesn’t happen, the ICO will take action to protect the public,” said deputy commissioner, Steve Wood, in a statement.

Blogging about its final enforcement notice, the regulator said today that it intends to carry out an audit to assess HMRC’s wider compliance with data protection rules.

“With the adoption of new systems comes the responsibility to make sure that data protection obligations are fulfilled and customers’ privacy rights addressed alongside any organisational benefit. The public must be able to trust that their privacy is at the forefront of the decisions made about their personal data,” writes Woods offering guidance for using biometric data “in a fair, transparent and accountable way”.

Under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) biometric data that’s used for identifying a person is classed as so-called “special category” data — meaning if a data controller is relying on consent as their legal basis for collecting this information the data subject must provide explicit consent.

In the case of HMRC, the ICO found it had failed to give customers sufficient information about how their biometric data would be processed, and failed to give them the chance to give or withhold consent.

It also collected voiceprints prior to publishing a Voice ID-specific privacy notice on its website. The ICO found it had not carried out an adequate data protection impact assessment prior to launching the system.

In October 2018 HMRC tweaked the automated options it offered to callers to provide clearer information about the system and their options.

That amended Voice ID system remains in operation. And in a letter to the ICO last week HMRC’s chief executive, Jon Thompson, defended it — claiming it is “popular with our customers, is a more secure way of protecting customer data, and enables us to get callers through to an adviser faster”.

As a result of the regulator’s investigation HMRC retrospectively contacted around a fifth of the seven million Brits whose data it had gathered to ask for consent. Of those it said more than 995,000 provided consent for the use of their biometric data and more than 260,000 withheld it.