#and your first and largest request is coming don’t worry. it’s on the docket for this weekend once I take a behemoth break bc I take

[ongreenergrasses]

short little prompt fill for @shatterthefragments, i hope you enjoy!

She wakes up with something sharp poking into her back and winces. Joe hushes her.

“Come here,” he says, and she burrows a little more closely into his side. There’s barely enough room for them both to squeeze in behind the filing cabinet. Nile doesn’t know how long they’ll have to stay there. Long enough for everyone in the building to leave, and they’ve already been there for hours. She doesn’t remember the last time she slept in a bed.

She feels Joe press a kiss to her temple. “Go back to sleep,” he says. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

Nile wraps her arms around him a little tighter and shifts again. There’s still something poking her in the back. She tries to ignore it. She can’t.

Joe starts gently stroking her hair, and she huffs and settles a little more. “Back to sleep,” he says again, and this time Nile does fall asleep, snug in his arms.

[theinvinciblenoob]

First, background checks at startups, then Huawei’s finance chief is arrested, SoftBank’s IPO is subscribed, and I am about to record our next edition of TechCrunch Equity. It’s Thursday, December 6, 2018.

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like or hate something here.

The dilemma of continuous background checks

My colleague John Biggs covered the Series A round for Israel-based Intelligo, a startup that provides “Ongoing Monitoring” — essentially a continuous background check that can detect if (when?) an employee has suddenly become a criminal or other deviant. That’s a slight pivot from the company’s previous focus of using AI/ML to conduct background checks more efficiently.

Background checks are a huge business. San Francisco-based Checkr, perhaps the most well-known startup in the space, has raised $149 million according to Crunchbase, driven early on by the need to on-board thousands of contingent workers at companies like Uber. Checkr launched what it calls “Continuous Check” which also actively monitors all employees for potential problems, back in July.

Now consider a piece written a few weeks ago by Olivia Carville at Bloomberg that explored the rise of “algorithmic auditors” that actively monitor employee expenses and flags ones it feels are likely to be fraudulent:

U.S. companies, fearing damage to their reputations, are loath to acknowledge publicly how much money they lose each year on fraudulent expenses. But in a report released in April, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners said it had analyzed 2,700 fraud cases from January 2016 to October 2017 that resulted in losses of $7 billion.

Here’s a question that bugs me though: we have continuous criminal monitoring and expense monitoring. Most corporations monitor web traffic and email/Slack/communications. Everything we do at work is poked and prodded to make sure it meets “policy.”

And yet, we see vituperative attacks on China’s social credit system, which …. monitors criminal records, looks for financial frauds, and sanctions people based on their scores. How long will we have to wait before employers give us “good employee behavior” scores and attach it to our profiles in Slack?

The conundrum of course is that no startup or company wants (or can) avoid background checks. And it probably makes sense to continually monitor your employees for changes and fraud. If Bob murders someone over the weekend, it’s probably good to know that when you meet Bob at Monday’s standup meeting.

But let’s not pretend that this continuous monitoring isn’t ruinous to something else required from employees: trust. The more heavily monitored every single activity is in the workplace, the more that employees feel that if the system allows them to get away with something, it must be approved. Without any checks, you rely on trust. With hundreds of checks, policy is essentially etched into action — if I can do it, it must meet policy.

In China, where social trust is extremely low, it likely makes sense to have some sort of scoring mechanism to substitute. But for startups and tech companies, building a culture of trust �� of doing the right thing even when not monitored — seems crucial to me for success. So before signing up for one of these continuous services, I’d do a double take and consider the potentially deleterious consequences.

If I was a startup employee, I would think twice (maybe thrice?) before traveling to China

Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Last weekend, Trump and Xi agreed to delay the implementation of tariffs on Chinese goods, which led to buoyant Chinese (tech) stocks Monday in Asia time zones. I wrote about how that doesn’t make any sense, since delaying tariffs doesn’t do anything to solve the structural issues in the US/China conflict:

To me the market is deeply misjudging not only the Chinese economy, but also the American leadership as well.

And specifically, I wrote about constraints on Huawei and ZTE:

In what world do these prohibitions disappear? The U.S. national security agencies aren’t going to allow Huawei and ZTE to deploy their equipment in America. Like ever. Quite frankly, if the choice was getting rid of all of China’s non-tariff barriers and allowing Huawei back into America, I think the U.S. negotiators would walk out.

So it was nice to learn (for me, not for her) that the head of finance of Huawei was arrested last night in Canada at the United States’ request. From my colleague Kate Clark:

Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer and second-largest smartphone maker, has been arrested in Vancouver, Canada on suspicion she violated U.S. trade sanctions against Iran, as first reported by The Globe and Mail.

Huawei confirmed the news with TechCrunch, adding that Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, faces unspecified charges in the Eastern District of New York, where she had transferred flights on her way to Canada.

If you wanted to know how the Trump administration was going to continue to fight the trade war outside of tariffs, you now have your answer. This is a bold move by the administration, targeting not just one of China’s most prominent tech companies, but the daughter of the founder of the company to boot.

China has since demanded her return.

Here is how this is going to play out. China is preventing the two American children of Liu Changming from leaving the country, essentially holding them hostage until their father returns to the mainland to face a criminal justice process related to an alleged fraud case. America now has a prominent daughter of a major Chinese company executive in their hands. That’s some nice tit-for-tat.

For startup founders and tech executives migrating between the two countries, I don’t think one has to literally worry about exit visas or extradition.

But, I do think the travel security operations centers at companies that regularly have employees moving between these countries need to keep very keen and cautious eyes on these developments. It’s entirely possible that these one-off “soft hostages” could flare to much higher numbers, making it much more complicated to conduct cross-border work.

Quick Bites

SoftBank’s IPO raises a lot of dollars

KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images

Takahiko Hyuga at Bloomberg reports that SoftBank has sold its entire book of shares for its whopping $23.5 billion IPO. The shares will officially price on Monday and then will trade on December 19. This is a critical and important win for Masayoshi Son, who needs the IPO of his telecom unit to deleverage some of the risk from SoftBank’s massive debt pile (and also to continue funding his startup dreams through Vision Fund, etc.)

SoftBank Vision Fund math, part 2

Arman and I talked yesterday about the complicated math behind just how many dollars are in SoftBank’s Vision Fund. More details, as Jason Rowley pointed out at Crunchbase News:

In an annual Form D disclosure filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning, SBVF disclosed that it has raised a total of approximately $98.58 billion from 14 investors since the date of first sale on May 20, 2017. The annual filing from last year said there was roughly $93.15 billion raised from 8 investors, meaning that the Vision Fund has raised $5.43 billion in the past year and added six new investors to its limited partner base.

I said yesterday that the fund size should be “$97 billion or $96.7 billion with precision, assuming this $5 billion reaches a final close.” So let’s revise this number again to $99 billion or $98.6 billion with precision, since it seems the $5 billion did indeed close.

What’s next

I am still obsessing about next-gen semiconductors. If you have thoughts there, give me a ring: danny@techcrunch.com.

Thoughts on Articles

Hopefully more reading time tomorrow.

Reading docket

What I’m reading (or at least, trying to read)

Huge long list of articles on next-gen semiconductors. More to come shortly.

via TechCrunch

[bestnewsmag-blog]

New Post has been published on Bestnewsmag

New Post has been published on https://bestnewsmag.com/mansfield-municipal-court-gets-10k-grant-to-update-tech/

Mansfield Municipal Court gets $10K grant to update tech

MANSFIELD — The Mansfield Municipal Courtroom is certainly one of 64 courts throughout the state to acquire techn  furnish funding from the Ohio Superb Courtroom.

The Courtroom acquired $10,000 to update the Court’s CMS, or case management device, with More advantageous Case-control Challenge software that will automate the transfer of facts between the clerk and probation workplace.

In general, 70 Court docket projects in forty-two counties across the country received more than $2.eight million.

“era offers boom get entry to to justice to extra Ohioans and get rid of obstacles to the efficient and effective management of justice for nearby courts,” Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor stated in a press launch. “Without this initiative, many a good deal needed era improvements in courts around Ohio might now not arise.”

That is the third annual spherical of funding through the Ohio Supreme Courtroom. Courts had been allowed to put up one investment request for up to two separate initiatives.

The choice turned into given to courts within entities the Ohio auditor has deemed to be in the monetary emergency or fiscal watch, along with those that have not obtained a generation provide previously, had been given precedence. The choice was additionally given to projects upgrading the Court docket’s current case management system affecting cash flow, in addition to those upgrading, changing or buying era structures, PC hardware or system supporting the case management machine or other structures affecting cash flow or the essential duties of the Courtroom.

Creating High-Tech Weapon Systems Is Good For Humanity

  Most people cringe when they think of more ominous, powerful, and destructive weapon systems. The mere thought of huge monetary and economic resources going into weapons that ultimately help kill people makes one cringe, and yet, there is an upside to advanced weaponry – and the upside is huge. I’d like to discuss this for a moment because recently I was interviewed on the topic.

Daniel (the interviewer) asks: How can the development of new weapons help the humankind?

You know, when I speak at Universities, I get this question early and often. Look, no one wants to have a war. There is nothing noble about killing members of one’s own species. It’s a tragic flaw of humankind, although evolutionarily speaking this streak of aggression which runs deep, well let’s just say it’s there for a reason. Nevertheless, while I do not condone the carnage, I do know that only 1% of all the people who have ever lived have actually died in a war. Most die of old age, I believe we should focus maximum research funding on life-longevity, maybe then we’d remember our past and not repeat it, perhaps ending war in the future.

However, we do not live in the future, we live now, and without debating the philosophical scientific question; “What is time?” we must defend ourselves when our leaders reach political impasse and the fighting begins. “The best advice when it comes to war is not to have one, but if you find yourself in a war, it’s best to win it quickly and decisively,” I often ponder; if Karl von Clausewitz were alive today, would he give a ‘thumbs up’ to that?

Now then, back to the question, and sorry to digress there, but it’s important, especially for the next generation whose talented minds will be keeping us safe. There is a reason why nations spend so much on defense and why it is so necessary.

If we look back, we see Leonardo da Vinci who spent a portion of his time inventing and sketching war machines, about 1/3 of his time judging from the large volume or work he left behind. It was as important back then as it is today.

Now then, consider if you will all the technology – originally used for making weapons, that helps us in our daily lives today. How about jet air travel? Jet engines were developed to propel war planes faster. How about rocketry, or how about the Internet, originally developed by ARPA and Bell Labs?

My grandfather worked with radars, we use those for air traffic control. He also worked with microwave beams, pure Naval Research, today we cook food with the same technology. What about GPS Navigation? What about Satellites? Think about it, what would our lives be like today without those things? What about that smart phone in your pocket, the one you just used to text, buy a coffee, scan your boarding pass, and set up a meeting? Yep, you can thank defense spending and research.

New materials used in our high-tech aircraft will be used to make cars, trucks, buses, planes, future flying cars, and trains lighter, meaning they use less energy (less fuel) and are stronger and safer, likewise we will have better building materials, more durable, and stronger. How about lasers for manufacturing, dentistry, or on the Mars Rovers?

Indeed, I think we owe a lot to the development of weapon systems, just as we owe a lot to our space exploration and particle accelerator technologies. This is the message I’d like to bring because I see these innovations and the transfer technologies, as well as what they’ve done in the past for humankind, I see that as a trend which will definitely continue

The Importance of Municipal Water Treatment

We’ve seen the pictures of people in third world countries drinking from polluted streams and heard about the rampant disease epidemics that take place in those countries. Living as we do in the United States, it’s hard to believe that anyone in the world wouldn’t know the connection between contaminated water and disease, but they either don’t or are powerless to do anything about the situation. What many of us don’t realize is that only 200 years ago, most of America had the same problems, and diseases spread in our country just like they do in other nations today. People didn’t understand what was happening, and even if they did, the technology wasn’t yet in place to conduct major municipal water treatment.

Actual water filtration started in Scotland in the 1700s. Scotland was an area of the world in those days that was full of scientists and philosophers and was in a period known as the Scottish Enlightenment, so it wasn’t surprising that they were in the position to realize the importance of clean, healthy drinking water and to then come up with a way to purify existing water sources. During this period of time, a Scottish scientist and engineer, Robert Thom, designed the first municipal water treatment facility. He utilized a method called slow sand filters and was able to provide clean, disease-free water for an entire town.

Since the eighteenth century, municipal water treatment systems have been redesigned and improved in order to provide safe water for residents in some of the largest cities in the world. Drinking water comes from two different sources: groundwater and surface water. About 95% of all the water we drink comes from groundwater sources. Pesticides and nitrates run into this groundwater and must subsequently be removed before the water will be safe for consumption. Groundwater also contains bacteria and other contaminants that are fed to it from surface water.

The human body is between 60 and 70% water, and we must constantly replenish the water supply in our bodies if we are going to maintain good health. Therefore, it is important that we have ready sources of clean drinking water. That’s where municipal water treatment plants have made a real difference in the lives we lead. We in the United States no longer have to worry about getting serious diseases from drinking the water that comes out of our taps, and we have all the fresh water we could possibly want. Now we need to work at getting clean water to people all over the world.

3 Tips for Being a Leader on the Volleyball Court

  Leadership is something all teams need for success, but it’s not always something easily defined or developed. We can’t say do this and do that and you’ll be a great leader for your volleyball team. Here are a few tips to help you move in that direction, though.

Tip #1: Be a model player

A leader need not be the best player on a team, but they do need to represent its ideals. This is mainly about attitude and effort. Leaders turn up on time and follow team rules – written and unwritten. They work at least as hard as everyone else. They don’t complain or whine, but instead get on with what needs to be done. Leaders don’t make excuses. They also respect the coach(es) and everyone else associated with the team. I could go on, but I think you probably get the idea.

All of this may sound like stuff that isn’t part of on-court leadership, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It is the foundation of being the person the other players look to when it’s competition time. A leader doesn’t just turn up for match day and have everyone follow them. They earn that right by what they do in training, at meetings, during strength & conditioning work – basically in every facet of being part of the team.

Tip #2: Communicate

It doesn’t take a loud voice and a constant stream of chatter to be a good leader, but it does take the ability to communicate with teammates. Talking is the most obvious example of this, and all leaders do need to be able to speak at the right time and in the right manner for the circumstances. Communication can just as importantly come from a look, a pat on the back, or a gesture, though. It’s about being connected with teammates and making sure everyone is on the same page.