January 2022

January 05, 2022 ,

This mask is quite literally lit.

On Wednesday, Razer debuted the Pro version of its Zephyr mask. The Razer Zephyr is a transparent mask with fans and two-way air filters that’s also equipped with customizable party-ready lighting. The Pro version adds voice amplification to the mask so everyone will be able to hear you when you say how much you love this song.

The Zephyr is based on a concept Razer showcased at CES 2021, when Covid-tech was all the rage. The actual version has straps that go around the head, not the ears as was envisioned for the concept. What with the lighting and the batteries and the fans, there was probably a bit too much hardware for ear straps.

A side view of the Razer Zephyr Pro shows head straps.
These straps do the heavy lifting. Credit: Razer

The lighting on the outside of the mask changes colors, which you can control with an app. There are also interior lights to illuminate your face, so everyone can actually see through the transparent mask, which Razer says has an “anti-fog coating.”

Actually making the mask useful for preventing the spread of Covid requires changing out N95 filters, which Razer sells on its site. 

The Zephyr is already available to buy for $99. The Zephyr Pro’s release date will be sometime in 2022, and Razer has not shared pricing information yet.




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January 05, 2022 ,

Major sex toy companies have made numerous highly visible and vocal attempts to go green over the last decade-plus: As the industry woke up to the toxic effects of common toy materials, most makers overhauled their manufacturing, using body safe and often more environmentally sound practices and substances. To cut down on ancillary waste, most replaced battery-gobbling electric toys with rechargeable models, and developed slimmer toy packaging. A couple companies even tried to launch fully green-powered toys, like a hand-cranked vibrator and a solar-powered bullet vibe. 

Yet even the most eco-conscious makers and retailers often gloss over the topic of toy disposal. At best, most stress that their toys are durable, and thus should last users years. But Carol Queen, a sexologist who works with the toy retail chain Good Vibrations, notes that this hand-waving just "kicks the can down the road." This non-engagement is also rather conspicuous in light of the rapid growth of the sex toy industry — and with it toy waste, as users toss out old products in favor of new models, as well as new items they didn't like as much as they hoped. Sex toys are a miniscule slice of overall consumer waste, but those made of plastic and electronic bits can be particularly environmentally devastating. It's all but impossible to calculate the exact number of adult items that end up in landfills, but the rising tide of toy waste has some activists concerned.   

"Holy shit, so many plastic sex toys are filling our landfills, polluting the ground," says Annie Sprinkle, a pioneer of ecosexuality, a small but growing movement built around the eroticization of eco-consciousness. 

This gap in the green sex conversation largely reflects the fact that it's shockingly hard to recycle sex toys — especially in America, one of the epicenters of the adult industry but also a nation with a notoriously erratic and dysfunctional recycling system. So, even if retailers and makers want to give users responsible avenues for disposing of their old items, Queen says they often just can't. A few firms have attempted to address these limitations in recent years; last fall actually witnessed a flurry of excitement about a new wave of supposedly easy-to-recycle, and in some cases even ostensibly biodegradable, toys. (VICE’s Helen Meriel Thomas dubbed it "the second coming" of eco-friendly sex toys.) But all of these solutions are flawed and limited at best, which leaves users to come up with creative ways to reduce their own sex toy waste.  

Untouchable materials 

Though some cheap, iffy sex toy materials, such as jelly-like plastics, are so low-grade that they cannot be broken down and reused, most modern toys are made of substances like ABS plastics, pure silicone, metal, glass, and even treated and sustainably-sourced hardwood that are in theory recyclable. In nations with robust recycling programs and laws, this theory translates well into practice; so long as you can get your toys to specialist recycling centers, they'll be broken down into their elements, and their recyclable materials will hopefully get turned into new items, but that's not always the case. 

In 2007, the United Kingdom-based toy mega retailer Lovehoney actually launched a program, dubbed "Rabbit Amnesty" in honor of the era's most popular type of vibrator, that helped British consumers avoid the hassle of finding specialty recyclers, and the (misplaced) shame of rolling up to one with an old vibrator in tow, by sending it to them instead. Lovehoney then consolidates these forsaken toys and brings them to proper disposal points. Over the last 15 years, a handful of similar convenient services have cropped up  across the United Kingdom and Australia. 

But in the United States, Queen explains, even a toy made solely of one eminently recyclable material "isn’t recyclable under ordinary conditions." Most recyclers just don't want anything to do with items that have been in contact with sexual fluids; they view them as a biohazard, and are under no legal obligation to process them. "Even while wearing protective gear, handling used sex toys is just unpleasant," admits Jack Lamon of the Canadian retailer Come As You Are. 

Many modern sex toys are also made of a mixture of materials, which most recyclers don't want to deal with, as breaking them down is time- and labor-intensive and they are price-sensitive, for-profit operations. "The materials might only be worth, say, $3," explains Alex Truelove, a recycling expert at the United States Public Interest Research Group, by way of a hypothetical yet all-too-plausible scenario. "That's much less than the labor and transportation costs associated with separating and preparing them." 

Eco-conscious consumers can try to break toys down themselves, but Felicity of Phallophile Reviews, a prominent sex toy review site, notes that this is often a lot harder than you might expect. (Felicity only uses her first name when discussing sex toys publicly.) And many toys don't actually list their specific materials, so it's hard to know what elements of a toy you've taken the time and effort to break down might actually be recyclable in theory. America's recycling system is also notoriously so fractious that even if you know that a toy or some of its broken-down elements are in theory recyclable, that doesn't mean anyone in your area, much less your municipal recycling program (if you have one) will be set up to take it. Taking pains to ship materials off to a recycler in another state that can take them may also end up creating a carbon footprint in transit and processing that outweighs the green value of recycling them.  

Even if you know your local recycling program processes the materials you've extracted from a toy, and sterilized to hell and back, you can't just pop it into a blue bin and have faith that it will get recycled. As Truelove explains, American recycling relies heavily on automatic sorting systems to keep costs low, and those systems are usually built to process common and fairly standardized items, like aluminum cans or cardboard boxes. Sex toys are rare enough, and so diverse in form, that they're not really on most recyclers' radars, and thus aren't accounted for in many automation systems. So, during sorting, toys or their deconstructed parts may still get diverted into a trash pile instead of processed for recycling. In the worst case (but all too common) scenarios, sorters may deem even sterilized toys or non-sortable toy elements contaminants, reject the entire bag or bin they're in, and burn or rubbish it all.   

"Right now, the term recyclable doesn't really mean anything."

So, Truelove cautions against putting too much stock in company hype about a product's so-called recyclable materials. (A few sex toy makers and retailers do use this as a selling point.) Because in-theory recyclable products are often not recyclable or recycled in fact. 

"Right now, the term recyclable doesn't really mean anything," Truelove stresses. 

A good idea while it lasted 

In the late aughts, ambitious toy companies and independent startups decided to get around these thorny issues by creating their own toy recycling programs, either for their defective or returned toys or for public use. The most ambitious of these projects would invite people from across the nation to sterilize and then send in their own toys. A dedicated team would sterilize them again and break them down into clearly identified materials and send large chunks to specialist recyclers who'd already guaranteed that they'd buy and process the raw goods in bulk. Even if they had to ship these materials far away, shipping one big hunk of matter rather than a flurry of individual toy bits would in theory minimize both environmental and capital costs.

However, when the adult industry reporter Lux Alptraum tried to follow up on these projects in 2013, she found that most of them never even got beyond the planning stages. And those that did manage to reach an operational stage were already defunct. Stefanie Iris Weiss, the author of ECO-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable, says that most of these projects fell short because they ran into "systemic recycling issues in their communities." 

Lamon suspects that even those that managed to bypass the limitations of recycling systems just couldn't make their programs work economically. Come As You Are runs a program like this in Canada, sending ABS plastics to a commercial recycler, electronic waste to its local municipal processing system, and saving loads of silicone for an undisclosed future store project. Lamon says he's never counted, but he estimates that the program gets about 20 items to recycle per week. However, he admits that they still have to throw a few of these toys out, because they're made of unrecyclable materials. "It is amazing to me that in 2022 a lot of people actually still don’t know what their sex toys are made of. It’s actually pretty scary," he said.

Lamon freely acknowledges that Come As You Are loses money on the project — which he is happy to do in the spirit of social-environmental service. But few businesses are willing to make that bottom line sacrifice. The adult retail giant Adam & Eve has in the past openly admitted that it can't find an economically viable way to recycle returned toys, and thus throws tens of thousands into the trash every year. Lovehoney did not respond to a request for comment, but it's possible that these practical limitations explain why they never expanded their Amnesty program to the States.   

One of these programs, started in 2009 by the Portland-based retailer Scarlet Girl, is supposedly still operational — but reportedly only for its customers. Scarlet Girl did not reply to a request for comment and has in the past been cagey about its economic viability and logistical specifics. 

Taylor Sparks of the eco-conscious retailer Organic Loven is still confident that someone will eventually make intra-industry recycling work, somehow. A few toy industry insiders Mashable spoke to speculated that if the adult world as a whole came together to develop one cohesive system, and perhaps subsidize it, they could develop a viable program with longevity. 

However, Ben Foster of The Natural Love Company, an eco-focused sex toy firm, says that most consumers just don't prioritize and demand recyclability in the same way they do body-safe and non-toxic materials, so the incentives just aren't there for such a serious recycling push within the industry yet. Popular attitudes are changing, he acknowledged. However, they're nowhere near the critical mass they'd need to reach in order to spur wide-scale waste management reform.

"As someone who lives in the southern U.S., I don't see many people prioritizing recycling,” Felicity, the sex toy reviewer, agreed. “My apartment complex doesn't even have recycling.” 

"Also, there's no public relations benefit in programs like this, because sex toy recycling sounds to the general public too much like 'reselling used sex toys,'" says Lamon. That's actually an issue in some shady corners of the adult industry, he stressed, so no one wants the association. 

However, even a fully-functional, industry-wide program would still have severe limitations. Truelove points out that prices for recycled materials fluctuate wildly, so there's no guarantee that any buyers the industry finds for its old toy materials will stick around for a meaningful amount of time. There's also no guarantee that the folks they sell materials to won't downcycle them into cheap items that cannot be recycled again, thus only slightly mitigating or deferring their environmental costs. Truelove notes that it can be hard for people offloading materials to tell what actually becomes of them — if they were actually recycled, or just dumped into a landfill at a later stage of the recycling process or turned into a costly new non-recyclable item, loaded with toxic additives. 

Which, of course, is not ideal. 

Go with the flow 

Rather than attempt to invent and control an industry-specific recycling system, in recent years a few toy makers have started developing toys that attempt to work with the current state — and the constraints — of the American recycling system. Most of these toys are modular, and thus easy to break down for maximal recycling within the limits of a local system's materials and sorting rules and standards. But since 2019, a handful of companies have also released toys made using biodegradable bioplastics — polymers created using things like corn starch rather than oil byproducts. This past spring, the sex tech company Womanizer drew a ton of press (including a writeup by Mashable) when it released the PREMIUM Eco, a toy made largely of bioplastic. 

SEE ALSO: 5 biggest sex toy myths debunked

"The development took around two years, because finding the right material wasn't easy," says Johanna Rief, Womanizer’s head of sexual empowerment and spokesperson. 

However, modular toys only reduce some friction in recycling efforts; they don't overcome hard limits within recycling systems. And bioplastics are notoriously controversial materials. Most of them only actually degrade in special industrial facilities; in nature most break down slowly into tiny microplastic bits, which are still often environmentally harmful even if they may not be as toxic as an oil-based material. Womanizer openly acknowledges that these facilities are still rare in the United States. However, Rief still advises disposing of the PREMIUM Eco "in the regular household recycling bin." 

This advice flies in the face of most recycling experts' caution about not putting anything that your local recycling system can't process into a bin, for fear of processors treating it like a contaminant and trashing the whole lot. 

"Are bioplastics the perfect long-term solution" to sex toy waste and recyclability, Rief asked hypothetically. "Probably not until the government or companies build more of the needed special [processing] facilities. But it's the best solution that we could come up with for now." 

Eco-conscious sex toy reviewers do not seem impressed with this solution, or other supposedly biodegradable toys. In a review of the Eco, a toy critic who goes by the name Miss Ruby wrote, "What is the point of touting this as 'fully recyclable' if none of your customers can do so?"

"What is the point of touting this as 'fully recyclable' if none of your customers can do so?"

"I think it’s a marketing tactic rather than an actual environmental commitment," says Felicity. 

Toward a greener, sexier future 

Rief argues that solving the sex toy industry's sticky end-of-life issues will require "the overall mindset of society regarding environmental issues and recycling" changing. Truelove agrees. He stresses that we need better laws and incentive structures to make sure that we actually can and do recycle as many in-theory recyclable materials as possible, and design products with their post-use fate in mind. But that sort of social and legal change will be a long, arduous process. 

In the short term, everyone Mashable spoke to for this story agreed that the best thing the sex toy industry can do to tackle waste is… pretty much what it's been doing for years now: Make toys durable. Cut back on excessive packaging and make shipping as efficient as possible. Limit waste in manufacturing processes and use as many sustainably recycled materials as possible in products. These mundane, often semi-invisible tweaks don't attract much fanfare, but they make a real difference. "Recycling ranks rather low among possible actions to tackle waste and climate change," argues Foster of The Natural Love Company. "Reduce and reuse take precedence." 

There's a constant stream of new waste reduction initiatives flowing out of the adult industry at all times. Recently, for example, the British toy maker Love Not War started a program where it will attempt to repair any broken toy returned to it. This month, added Love Not War co-founder William Ranscombe, they're also launching a new bullet vibe, The Maya, "made from 99 percent recycled aluminum," one of the easiest to recycle, and most reliably recycled, materials out there. 

"You do have to start somewhere," Truelove says. "I appreciate companies that are trying." 

Consumers need to take a little ownership over and initiative in managing their own toy waste, too. Some have attempted to do so by participating in used toy exchange or resale programs among friends, in their local communities, or via online marketplaces. But as Mashable noted a few years back, the lack of regulation and transparency involved in most of these exchanges make them dicey at best if you don't know and trust your used toy source.

The best thing most consumers can actually do is to simply buy fewer new sex toys. "Too many people buy sex toys they never use, or use once and then throw away," Sprinkle, the ecosexual activist, points out. "Novelty is nice, but it doesn't have to come in the form of an adult toy… If you have three sex toys you really love, that's usually enough." You can care for them well, keep them alive for years or decades, then replace them only when they are beyond any hope of repair.  




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January 05, 2022 ,
Sophie Alcorn Contributor
Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.
More posts by this contributor

​​Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

TechCrunch+ members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie,

We’re an early-stage startup that — like many other companies — is facing a significant challenge when it comes to recruiting talent. We have not posted job openings internationally, but we’ve received some applications from international talent.

This is all new territory for us. What’s your advice for hiring internationally? Also, I know the H-1B lottery is fast approaching.

Can you explain a bit more about this process?

— Eager Early-Stage Startup

Dear Eager,

Yes, the H-1B lottery is fast approaching! The period for registering H-1B candidates opens in March; there are a few steps companies need to take before then if they have never before participated in the H-1B lottery process. First, be sure to create an account with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which conducts the lottery. Given this timeline, your company should determine as soon as possible whether the positions you are looking to fill and the prospective international talent you are looking to hire would qualify for an H-1B specialty occupation visa.

Check out my column in TechCrunch+ last week for more specifics on the lottery process. To bypass the H-1B lottery — or if a candidate is not selected in the lottery — your company could consider getting a cap-exempt H-1B for the candidate. Transferring an individual’s H-1B to your startup is also an option. To find out more about that process, take a look at this Dear Sophie column.

A futurist lens on international hires

I recently had a fascinating conversation with Jamais Cascio, a futurist and distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto. Cascio has some wonderful insight relevant to your question.

The population in the U.S. is getting older and the birth rate is declining; as such, we will increasingly need to look to immigration to keep our economy going. Cascio discusses three mindsets for dealing with radical changes in this chaotic world to remain strong as a company and succeed into the future. This advice is highly applicable to companies such as yours as you embark on an effort to hire from abroad.

The three mindsets that Cashio said would benefit companies are:

  • Resilience: Being able to withstand a shock to the system without breaking. For example, he said companies that have just-in-time delivery models are very brittle and prone to break down compared to those that have built-in slack into their system. Building in slack often requires additional resources and reduced efficiency and profit but offers built-in resilience.
  • Improvisation: Remain creative and nimble and be ready to embrace change.
  • Empathy: Probably the most critical of the three, this involves recognizing the humanity in others and what we do matters to others now and in the future. (I loved hearing that the role of the heart is and will be critical for business success!)

Embracing these mindsets while developing an immigration strategy that offers stability for international talent will be key to attracting and retaining talent and creating a company culture that fosters innovation and endurance. Listen to my podcast, “Tips for Companies to Support Valued Humans,” in which I discuss this in more detail.

A composite image of immigration law attorney Sophie Alcorn in front of a background with a TechCrunch logo.

Image Credits: Joanna Buniak / Sophie Alcorn (opens in a new window)

Specific visas to consider

Before we dive into visa specifics, please be aware that I recommend you consult an experienced immigration attorney, who can help you devise an immigration strategy for prospective international hires, as well as provide guidance on what visas would be appropriate given the job opening and prospective candidate. Take a look at a previous Dear Sophie column in which I offer an overview on immigration-related matters you should focus on if your startup does not yet have someone handling HR.

O-1A visa

If your prospective hires don’t make it through the H-1B lottery process I mentioned above, or you need to get them here more quickly than October and you can’t take the risk that they might not be selected in the H-1B lottery this year, a great option is the O-1A extraordinary ability visa. More and more of our startup clients are opting to pursue it for key executives and individual contributors with niche expertise. While the bar for qualifying for the O-1A is much higher than for the H-1B, the process for getting an O-1A is much quicker. And the O-1A does not have an annual cap or lottery process to contend with.

Visas for talent from specific countries

Specific visas exist for talent from Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico and Singapore.

If the job candidate is an Australian national, an E-3 visa will allow that individual to work in the U.S. in a specialty occupation, just like an H-1B. E-3 visas also require the sponsoring employer to file a Labor Condition Application with the U.S. Department of Labor, as is required with H-1B petitions. A maximum of 10,500 E-3 visas is available each year.

Is the job candidate a Chilean or Singaporean national? If so, the candidate may qualify for an H-1B1 specialty occupation visa, which is an H-1B visa earmarked for citizens of Chile and Singapore. Thanks to special treaties the U.S. has with those two countries, professionals may qualify to receive H-1B1 visas on a fast-track basis. Each year, 1,400 H-1B1 visas are reserved for Chileans and 5,400 are reserved for Singaporeans — and rarely are those visas completely exhausted.

Professionals from Canada and Mexico can come to the U.S. to work under a TN visa, which was born out of trade treaties between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. TN visas are limited to professions listed in treaty agreements, but most of these jobs overlap with H-1B specialty occupations.

Some good news: Through the end of 2022, consular officers can now waive the in-person interview requirement for some individuals seeking some nonimmigrant (temporary) visas, including H-1Bs and O-1s. Individuals who are applying for a visa in their country or nationality of residence may have the interview waived if any of the following apply:

  • Previously issued any type of visa.
  • Never been refused a visa unless it was overcome or waived.
  • No ineligibility.
  • Citizens or nationals of a country that participates in the Visa Waiver Program.

Wishing you every success!

Sophie

Have a question for Sophie? Ask it here. We reserve the right to edit your submission for clarity and/or space.

The information provided in “Dear Sophie” is general information and not legal advice. For more information on the limitations of “Dear Sophie,” please view our full disclaimer. You can contact Sophie directly at Alcorn Immigration Law.

Sophie’s podcast, Immigration Law for Tech Startups, is available on all major platforms. If you’d like to be a guest, she’s accepting applications!




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January 05, 2022 ,

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here.

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for January 5, 2021! Today we have a great mix of news for you. Mega-rounds? Heck yes. Electric trucks from U.S. companies? Yep! Android cozying up to Windows? But of course. And some great essays on lock-up periods, LP transparency and more.

But before we do that, every once in a while I’m going to highlight a TechCruncher behind the scenes who deserves some love. Today it’s Henry Pickavet, one of our editors and guiding lights, someone I have known and worked with since my early 20s. He’s perfect, apart from the sports teams he follows and the fact that he likes cricket. Follow him on Twitter here if you are so inclined! —Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Making sense of OpenSea at $13B: From rumor to report to confirmation, the OpenSea funding round worth $300 million came to its conclusion quickly. Now the NFT marketplace is worth some $13 billion. So, TechCrunch did the obvious thing and asked if that number makes any darn sense. As it turns out, yes, but how much depends on your level of crypto-bullishness,
  • Android 🤝 Windows: While Apple has been busy defending its walls surrounding the garden that is iOS, Google and Microsoft have been busy paving roads between their Android and Windows operating systems. First, Microsoft announced that some Android apps would eventually run on Windows. And now, news that “Google is working with the likes of Intel, Acer and HP to [connect] your phone to your Windows PC.”
  • And here’s the *other* company now worth more than $10B: It’s Miro! Yep, the online workspace company, as we put it, is now worth some $17.5 billion after raising a $400 million round. The company claims it has 30 million users. Competitor Mural is also doing well, indicating that their market is fairly deep in the remote-work era.

Startups/VC

A few essays to start our startup download today, I think. The first comes from our own Connie Loizos diving into the “year of the disappearing lock-up.” In short, Loizos notes that the traditional forced holding period post-IPO is being dismantled in hot public offerings. Not that this is a guarantee of future results — the opposite, it seems — but it’s worth tracking the change to what was once a key IPO rule, and, frankly, mark of confidence.

Speaking of IPOs, the insurtech IPO wave of 2020 and 2021 is looking pretty darn threadbare today. TechCrunch took a look back at the struggles of names we’ve written about for ages, the Roots and Metromiles of the world, but also Oscar Health. It hasn’t done well either, it turns out.

Anna Heim wrote a fascinating piece on LP transparency. The idea that founders should care about where their investors get their money is not new. But what is fresh is the leverage that founders have over investors — the founder-investor power dynamic has flipped, leading more VCs to think that it might be time to open up their own books a little.

Now, more news!

  • Bankaya goes offline for customer acquisition: The hunt for new users is a global startup challenge, and one that leads to some interesting solutions. Mexican fintech Bankaya is taking an IRL tack to the challenge, noting that the major ad channels for its products are rife with competitors chasing the same eyeballs.
  • Tax advantaged crypto investments? Startup Alto just raised $40 million for what TechCrunch reports is a “self-directed IRA platform [that] provides a simpler, more affordable option for individuals to invest their retirement savings into alternatives,” at least in theory. I dig it.
  • Fractal goes unicorn with new $360M round: It turns out that this company is 21 years old, so it’s not a startup, per se. But it is a private company that just raised nine figures, so it hit our radar. The company’s analytics product does AI and analytics work for major companies.
  • SoftBank eyes new Indian investment: Pune-based ElasticRun is in talks to close a round worth $200 million or so from SoftBank Vision 2 and Goldman Sachs, Manish Singh reports for TechCrunch. The startup helps neighborhood stores “secure inventory from top brands and working capital,” we report.
  • Meet a very cute dishwasher named Bob: From the CES trenches, meet Bob. It’s a small dishwasher unit for apartment countertops that is efficient, and, dare we say it, adorable.
  • To close out our startup items, Xage has raised $30 million to help project critical infrastructure. Which is good, given that much of the power lines and water facilities that you depend on are fairly out of date and begging for nation-state shenanigans. (The startup’s name is pronounced zage, Ron Miller.)

4 trends that will define e-commerce in 2022

Multi Colored Note Paper on Cork Board

Image Credits: MirageC (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Data privacy has been top of mind for online sellers and for good reason: Regulators are taking an interest, and iOS 14.5 lets users turn off data tracking, with negative consequences for “Facebook’s ad targeting.”

Bearing those factors and others in mind, Ben Parr, president and co-founder of e-commerce marketing platform Octane.ai, shared his predictions for 2022 with TechCrunch+:

  • Personalization and zero-party data become critical.
  • E-commerce embraces web3 and NFTs, but what will that look like?
  • Live shopping goes mainstream.
  • Slow but gradual improvement to the supply chain.

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

We have a number of automotive-themed news items below, but let’s start on your phone with Instagram. The social subsidiary of the larger Meta empire is bringing back its chronological feed. Praise be. Forcing users to endure algorithmic timelines is lame, in my view, and something that moves power away from users toward the adtech gods that run social platforms. I might even re-sign up for Instagram now that this is fixed.

  • Mortgage data analytics company settles with FTC over data breach: Back in 2019, TechCrunch reported that “OpticsML, a New York-based vendor working for Ascension, left a database of highly sensitive financial data exposed to the internet without a password.” Now two years after that reporting, results!
  • GM promises a plethora of electric vehicles: If you want an electric Equinox or Blazer, GM is going to hook you up in 2023. It claims. And the company is building an electric Silverado pickup, coming a bit late to the table given how many announcements Ford has already made. But the die really is cast here regarding the future of rolling vehicles, no matter who is currently leading. They are going electric. And fast.
  • And GM wants to get self-driving cars on the road: By the middle of the decade, the company said. I am a wee bit skeptical of any provided timeline for autonomous vehicles, but at some point they will work — right? — and that day will be good. Let’s hope these latest projections bear out in time.

TechCrunch Experts

dc experts

Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images

TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you.

If you’re curious about how these surveys are shaping our coverage, check out this article on TechCrunch+ from Ben Parr: “4 trends that will define e-commerce in 2022.”




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January 05, 2022 ,

The electric Fisker Ocean SUV has made it from the coast to the desert, soaking up that Las Vegas sunshine for extra solar energy.

In a video released Wednesday at the CES technology show Fisker showed its upcoming electric SUV on the move. Its CEO Henrik Fisker is at the wheel during the high-speed ride and we see the Pac-Man-like solar panels from above.

The EV was first revealed at CES 2020 and now is set for production this November. The base model starts at $37,499.

In a Wednesday call with Fisker from the CES convention floor, he said more interest has come in for the higher-end $68,999 version. "Most want all the features," he said, referring to those solar panels for an extra 2,000 miles of range each year, a rotating center screen, and California mode, which lowers all the windows, including the back windshield.

The latest reservation numbers for the first Fisker EV, according to Fisker, are 24,500 and growing. The first 5,000 first edition cars will purportedly be available by the end of this year.




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January 04, 2022 ,

BMW revealed its first electric SUV, the iX, earlier this year to much fanfare after taking a concept car and turning it into the real thing.

Now BMW is upping the ante with a performance version of the iX. The iX M60 model introduced at the CES technology conference early Wednesday will still boast the iX’s dual motors and range of over 300 miles, but it'll go a lot faster. Its max speed will now be 155 mph, compared to the iX's 125 mph peak.

BMW's Johann Kistler called it "BMW's most powerful battery EV" during a press briefing on the car — with the term “battery EV” presumably distinguishing it from BMW’s line of hybrid and hydrogen-powered cars. The M in any BMW model is the brand's sports car designation, meaning the iX M60 is equipped with features like a sports quality suspension in addition to being able to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds, shaving off a second from its predecessor’s record. In the briefing, Kistler practically purred when he called the iX M60 "top of the line."

Before the iX was unveiled last year, BMW’s EV line only included the electric compact sedan, the i3. Now it's ramping up its EV clout with the i4 sports car and different versions of the iX. More EVs are planned for BMW in the next few years, including an all-electric 7 Series.

A red car on a snowy highway.
The original iX, for comparison. Credit: BMW
Car with gray cloudy background with its headlights on.
The M Series is faster. Credit: BMW

And yet, the iX M60 (like the iX before it) has the look of a classic BMW SUV, with the recognizable kidney grille that the German brand is known for. The M series EV will still have the self-healing surface that removes all dents, scratches, and nicks with enough heat (just some California sunshine is sufficient, BMW reps said). 

The steering wheel and dashboard of a car seen through the open driver door.
An inside look.
Credit: BMW
Close up of grille hatchings.
Up close with the self-healing grille.
Credit: BMW

The first electric performance BMW is supposed to arrive later this year. The iX is priced at $84,195 but BMW still hasn’t announced what it will cost to get the extra oomph of the M60.




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January 04, 2022 ,

Headphones are great for keeping yourself entertained without bothering anyone around you, but they aren’t perfect. Earbuds can be uncomfortable for long listening sessions and over-ear headphones can mess with your hair. 

What if you could listen to music privately without any headphones at all?

That’s the question the Noveto N1 wants to answer. One of the most intriguing audio products to surface at CES 2022, the Israeli tech company’s device looks like a little soundbar that you place on a desk in front of you. Unlike a soundbar, however, it’s not meant to fill a room with audio. Instead, Noveto claims it can transmit ultrasound through the air and place it near your ears, giving you a private listening experience that shouldn’t bother your coworkers or roommates.

The N1 is supposed to launch sometime in 2022, but no price was given at CES.

Noveto N1 on device control buttons
The on-device controls look simple enough. Credit: Noveto

Noveto also says it has face-tracking tech which allows the sound to adjust to your head movements, theoretically providing three-dimensional audio. It can connect to devices via WiFi, Bluetooth, USB-C, or a 3.5mm headphone jack, so pretty much anything you use to listen to music should be compatible with the N1. 

There’s one gigantic caveat to this: Mashable didn’t send anyone to CES this year due to the whole pandemic thing, so none of us have been able to test the N1. Beaming audio directly from a speaker to someone’s ears without annoying other people nearby is a lofty, futuristic promise that we haven’t really seen take off in mainstream audio hardware. If it works, it could be incredible. But if there are even tiny issues, like if the audio takes too long to adjust when you move your head or if the private listening isn’t so private after all, the entire experience could be disappointing or even outright useless.

But hey, if you’re sick of headphones, just know that someone out there is trying to do something about it.




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January 04, 2022 ,

If your dog could text you, what would they say?

This week coinciding with CES, FluentPet, the maker of those viral talking buttons all over TikTok, launched FluentPet Connect, a new version of its button system, now equipped with WiFi and data capturing. The FluentPet Connect app automatically captures when a dog presses a button allowing owners to track their progress and get messages in real time.

Teaching your dog to use the FluentPet system — hexagonal tiles or "HexTiles" with buttons that are customized to say different words like "outside" or "play" when pressed — is all about patience, repetition, and close observation, according to the experiences of many in the community forum started by FluentPet. Now users don't have to worry about missing a hard-earned milestone when they're out.

SEE ALSO: Dog anxiety is real. These products can help calm your anxious pet.

"When people are in another room, they can get a text message from their dog [saying], 'I really need to go outside right now' you probably want to come get me," said Leo Trottier, CEO of FluentPet. 

The new version was influenced by a motivation to capture what some claim are remarkable discoveries happening as dogs learn to communicate verbally with their humans. An example of these animals using sound buttons to communicate with their humans was told to Trottier by Alexis Devine, who has 7.2 million followers on TikTok for her videos of Bunny, the famous talking dog. "Alexis was totally perplexed because Bunny was saying 'sound walk' or 'sound tug.'" But Bunny didn’t seem interested in playing tug o’ war or going for a walk, but kept insistently pressing the buttons for "sound" and "walk" and "sound" and "tug." 

"It occurred to us, well maybe 'sound walk' is Bunny pressing buttons and 'sound tug' is kind of like a conversation between Alexis and Bunny." 

Alexis Devine and Bunny are part of a 5,000-person study that gathers and reports data to FluentPet on a biweekly basis. But now, if users of the new version choose to opt in, their data can be automatically gathered and reported. Inspired by Christina Hunger’s work, the goal of the study is to research how dogs (and cats) can learn to express themselves using such devices. 

Does this mean humans finally discovered a way to talk to animals? "I mean, people should be skeptical. Alexis [Devine] is skeptical. I'm skeptical. There are lots of times when Bunny does things that don't make any sense at all," said Trottier.

With any experiment, however, that’s to be expected, says Trottier. Just watching one of Bunny’s videos shows the deliberate intent behind each communication. He’s not just pushing buttons at random. 

But not everyone is convinced. "You stand a much better chance of teaching people to speak dog than you do to teach dogs to speak human," Dr. Clive Wynne, founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University Wynne told Mashable in November.

In addition to WiFi connectivity, the new FluentPet Connect tiles also have improved sound quality, are more durable, and are more customizable for fitting the individual needs of each dog. 

The FluentPet Connect Base HexTile ($69.95) and Expansion HexTiles ($49.95) can be reserved here and will begin shipping Spring 2022.




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January 04, 2022 ,

NASA achieved a groundbreaking feat Tuesday when it finished unfurling the enormous sunshield protecting the James Webb telescope from light and heat in space.

But if you’re looking for photographic evidence of this or any other Webb deployment, you’ll come up short.

That’s because there are no surveillance cameras mounted anywhere on the observatory, which has the world’s largest and most powerful telescope ever built. And you’ll be photo-starved from Webb for half of 2022: The first photos of space from the telescope aren’t expected until June.

“Nobody would love to see Webb doing its thing right now (more) than us,” said Keith Parrish, NASA’s commissioning manager for the observatory.

The lack of cameras wasn’t a mission oversight — it was too complicated, Parrish said during a NASA Live broadcast Tuesday. If cameras were incorrectly designed, they could have jeopardized the $10 billion telescope’s ability to get never-before-seen snapshots of stars and galaxies billions of light-years away.

Using infrared technology, the telescope can peer through gas and dust and detect light waves that have stretched with the expansion of space. But infrared is a type of invisible light that can be sensed as heat, so the telescope needs to be extra cold to pick up faint heat signals coming from far away. Cameras, and the artificial light they’d need to illuminate the observatory, would add heat behind the sunshield — the very place they want to limit it, Parrish said.

What's more, any camera on the cold and dark side of Webb, blocked by the sunshield, would have to be specially designed "from the ground up" to survive that extreme environment.

“It would fall apart, if not,” Parrish said, “And we'd have debris floating around, possibly.”

To watch Webb, which is undergoing many different configurations as it unfolds its antennas, sunshield and mirrors, NASA would require several cameras in various locations. That need compounded the engineering burden, giving NASA one more reason not to pursue building them.

SEE ALSO: What the giant James Webb telescope will see that Hubble can't

But the command center isn’t flying blind. In the absence of pictures or a live video feed, NASA pulls data from all of the observatory’s instruments, telling the scientists exactly what they’re doing at all times. The readings are synthesized with a visualization tool that puts a real-time animation on their screens. It’s the next best thing to having eyes on Webb, Parrish said.

In terms of the breathtaking space photos expected to eventually come from the telescope, those won’t begin for another six months, said Laura Betz, a NASA spokeswoman.

After Webb has completely opened this month, the observatory will gradually cool down to its operating temperature, less than -380 degrees Fahrenheit. NASA will also align the mirrors and calibrate the instruments to collect scientific information.

Artists' renderings abound on the Internet of what the telescope looks like in space — some could even fool the layman into thinking they’re the real deal.

One spectacle is authentic: a picture of the observatory pulling away from its rocket, shortly after its Christmas launch. The image (which is above) was captured by the cameras on the rocket’s upper stage, the part that transported it into space. Earth can be seen hovering above it.

“This was one of these things that I could hardly believe was real when it was happening,” said Michelle Handleman, a NASA public affairs specialist. “It was an absolutely gorgeous shot.”




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January 04, 2022 ,

Since Kindle began shipping in China nearly nine years ago, the ebook giant has garnered a loyal following in the country. The journey has never been easy, thanks to regulatory hurdles around digital content. Recently, there are signs that the Amazon-owned ebook business is scaling back some of its operations in China.

Kindle’s official store on Tmall, Alibaba’s online shopping mall, closed down in October. Chinese versions of the ebook device are currently out of stock on Amazon.cn, the firm’s localized site for China. Its official store on JD.com remains up but most of its devices are also out of stock. Some models are still available on its official WeChat store.

In a statement to TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson said some Kindle models are “currently sold out in China” but consumers can still purchase Kindle through “third-party online and offline retailers.” The company declined to say why its Alibaba store was shut and why its products are not stocked in China.

“We are dedicated to serving Chinese consumers,” said the spokesperson. “Amazon’s commitment to offering quality customer service and warranty remains unchanged.”

TechCrunch has reached out to Alibaba and JD.com for comment.

Amazon has reportedly disbanded Kindle’s device team in China back in November, according to a social media post by a reporter at BK Economy, a subsidiary of state-owned Beijing News. Amazon China declined to comment on the alleged layoff.

Axing the device team would spell the end of the ebook’s localized hardware. Like iPhone, Kindle has been offering Chinese editions of its devices, which function the same as the American versions but come with aftersales service in China. Closing the hardware unit would also mean third-party distributors are limited to importing overseas Kindle models for Chinese consumers.

A key but challenging market

As of 2017, China was Kindle’s largest market with double-digit growth, David Limp, senior vice-president of Amazon Devices said at the time. Nonetheless, the Chinese ebook market has been markedly different from the rest of the world at the outset.

“If you look at bestseller lists in 90% of the world, ebooks are – at least at the top of the stack – equivalent to digitalized versions of traditional books. In China, however, traditionally-published books, like traditionally-published longer-form video content such as TV and movies, are not very interesting because the majority of them come from state-owned publishing or content houses that are constrained in the topics they can cover,” said a veteran of China’s ebook industry who declined to be named.

It’s unclear how Kindle has fared in China more recently and what led to its decision to close its Tmall store. But given the sheer length of time that Kindle has been present in the market and the amount of hardware that has been sold there, it stands to reason that there are still a large number of Chinese Kindle owners who do purchase and read traditional ebooks from Amazon’s Kindle ebook store.

Kindle’s Chinese ebook store, which is separate from the global one and features a much smaller pool of English-language books, is still available, so current Kindle owners in China aren’t affected.

Over the years, Amazon has abridged several waning businesses in China while ramping up the budding ones. In 2019, the firm shuttered its online marketplace connecting Chinese buyers and sellers, a business that had put it in competition with local titans like Alibaba. In the meantime, Amazon has been doubling down on its export business in the country, helping Chinese merchants find customers around the world.

Amazon has grappled with criticisms after Reuters reported last month it created a portal to feature books sanctioned by the Chinese government, a project that had helped it overcome ebook licensing problems in China.

This is a developing story…

Amazon China to close local marketplace and place more focus on cross-border




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