Apple responds to Siri privacy concerns

THE DAILY CRUNCH FRIDAY, AUGUST 2 2019 By Anthony Ha Apple says it's suspending a Siri program that raised privacy flags, DoorDash buys Caviar and Amazon's big Pentagon contract may be in trouble. Here's your Daily Crunch for August 2, 2019. 1. Apple suspends Siri response grading after privacy concerns After The Guardian ran a story last week about how Siri recordings are used for quality control, Apple says it's suspending the program worldwide while it reviews the process. The practice, known as grading, involves sharing audio snippets with contractors, who determine whether Siri is hearing the requests accurately. Apple says that in the future, users will be able to choose whether or not they participate in the grading. 2. DoorDash is buying Caviar from Square in a deal worth $410 million Square bought Caviar about five years ago in a deal worth about $90 million. Now, Caviar has found a new home with DoorDash. SPONSORED CONTENT: Visa Visa's Fintech Fast Track Program Goes Global with Launch in U.S. Visa continues to champion the fintech community across the globe, with the launch of the Fast Track program in the U.S., supported by a large and growing network of partners and the VC community. Learn More… 3. President throws latest wrench in $10B JEDI cloud contract selection process Throughout the months-long selection process, the Pentagon repeatedly denied accusations that the contract was somehow written to make Amazon a favored vendor, but The Washington Post reports President Trump has asked his newly appointed defense secretary to examine the process. 4. Following Ninja's news, Mixer pops to top of the App Store's free charts Yesterday, Tyler "Ninja" Blevins announced that he's leaving Twitch, moving his streaming career over to Microsoft's Mixer platform. This morning, Mixer shot to the top of the App Store's free app charts. 5. Google ordered to halt human review of voice AI recordings over privacy risks Apple isn't the only company to face scrutiny over its handling of user audio recordings. 6. UrbanClap, India's largest home services startup, raises $75M Through its platform, UrbanClap matches service people such as cleaners, repair staff and beauticians with customers across 10 cities in India, as well as Dubai and Abu Dhabi. 7. Why AWS gains big storage efficiencies with E8 acquisition The team at Amazon Web Services is always looking to find an edge and reduce the costs of operations in its data centers. (Extra Crunch membership required.) Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: Operations and Logistics Associate at Belong Home (Palo Alto, CA, USA) US Product Manager AI Lab at Kaia Health Inc. (Brooklyn, NY, USA) (Senior) Software Engineer at PhAST (Cambridge, MA, USA) Senior Software Engineer at Summit Search Consultants (Chicago, IL, USA) Senior Systems Engineer (Officer, Systems Engineering) at The Pew Charitable Trusts (Washington, D.C., USA) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2019 Oath Tech Network. All rights reserved. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107

                                                           

Lyft pulls e-bikes after fires

THE DAILY CRUNCH THURSDAY, AUGUST 1 2019 By Anthony Ha Lyft's e-bikes hit a speed bump, the Impossible Whopper will be everywhere and IBM shows its cloud ambitions. Here's your Daily Crunch for August 1, 2019. 1. Lyft pulls e-bikes in light of apparent battery fires Lyft recently won the right to launch its pedal-assist bikes in San Francisco, but now it's pulling those bikes from the city and other parts of the Bay Area after two of those bikes experienced apparent battery fires. A spokesperson told us, "Out of an abundance of caution, we are temporarily making the ebike fleet unavailable to riders while we investigate and update our battery technology." 2. For the next month, the Impossible Whopper will be available at Burger Kings across the country The world's second largest fast food chain is rolling out the Impossible Whopper nationwide at all of its 7,200 U.S. locations, testing demand for the meaty tasting meatless patty. SPONSORED CONTENT: Zendesk Hi San Francisco! Join Zendesk for a CX event on October 3 The Zendesk Showcase lands in SF on October 3 to bring customer experience leaders together! In one day you'll learn about all things CX, Zendesk's latest product and feature releases, as well as hear from some of our amazing customers. Register now! Learn More… 3. With the acquisition closed, IBM goes all in on Red Hat These announcements further IBM's ambitions to bring its products to any public and private cloud — which was the reason IBM acquired Red Hat in the first place. 4. Asana launches Workload to help prevent burnout Workload provides a central view of how much more work any given team can currently handle. Team members can customize their own workload based on criteria like points or hours, and even set capacity limits. 5. Amazon-backed food delivery startup Deliveroo acquires Edinburgh software studio Cultivate Cultivate is a software development and user experience design house that has worked with a number of big names, including Deliveroo itself. 6. Smartphone sales expected to drop 2.5% globally this year New numbers from Gartner forecast a drop of 2.5%, down to 1.5 billion, with the biggest hits to the industry in Japan, Western Europe and North America. 7. The Exit: The acquisition charting Salesforce's future With Salesforce's $15.7 billion acquisition of Tableau closing, we talked to investor Scott Sandell of NEA. (Extra Crunch membership required.) Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: Senior Software Engineer at Summit Search Consultants (Chicago, IL, USA) Senior Systems Engineer (Officer, Systems Engineering) at The Pew Charitable Trusts (Washington, D.C., USA) Business Development Manager - Venture Technology Group at Dentons US LLP (New York, USA) Server & Storage Architecture Supervisor at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States) Technology Venture Professional for Northpond Ventures at Northpond Ventures (Bethesda, MD, United States) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2019 Oath Tech Network. All rights reserved. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107