Popular Linux distribution Gentoo has been “totally pwned” according to researchers at Sophos, and none of the current code can be trusted. The team immediately posted an update and noted that none of the real code has been compromised. However, they have pulled the GitHub repository until they can upload a fresh copy of the unadulterated code.

“Today 28 June at approximately 20:20 UTC unknown individuals have gained control of the GitHub Gentoo organization, and modified the content of repositories as well as pages there. We are still working to determine the exact extent and to regain control of the organization and its repositories. All Gentoo code hosted on github should for the moment be considered compromised,” wrote Gentoo administrators. “This does NOT affect any code hosted on the Gentoo infrastructure. Since the master Gentoo ebuild repository is hosted on our own infrastructure and since Github is only a mirror for it, you are fine as long as you are using rsync or webrsync from gentoo.org.”

None of the code is permanently damaged because the Gentoo admins kept their own copy of the code. Gentoo stated that the compromised code could contain malware and bugs and that users should avoid the GitHub version until it is reinstated.

“The Gentoo Infrastructure team have identified the ingress point, and locked out the compromised account,” wrote the admins. “Three Github repositories containing the Gentoo code, Musl, and systemd. All of these repositories are being “reset back to a known good state.”

NEW YORK — 

For evangelical Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr., this is their political holy grail.

Like many religious conservatives in a position to know, the Liberty University president with close ties to the White House suspects that the Supreme Court vacancy President Donald Trump fills in the coming months will ultimately lead to the reversal of the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade. But instead of celebrating publicly, some evangelical leaders are downplaying their fortune on an issue that has defined their movement for decades.

“What people don’t understand is that if you overturn Roe v. Wade, all that does is give the states the right to decide whether abortion is legal or illegal,” Falwell told The Associated Press in an interview. “My guess is that there’d probably be less than 20 states that would make abortion illegal if given that right.”

Falwell added: “In the ’70s, I don’t know how many states had abortion illegal before Roe v. Wade, but it won’t be near as many this time.”

The sentiment, echoed by evangelical leaders across the country this past week, underscores the delicate politics that surround a moment many religious conservatives have longed for. With the retirement of swing vote Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Trump and his Republican allies in the Senate plan to install a conservative justice who could re-define the law of the land on some of the nation’s most explosive policy debates — none bigger than abortion.

And while these are the very best of times for the religious right, social conservatives risk a powerful backlash from their opponents if they cheer too loudly. Women’s groups have already raised the alarm for their constituents, particularly suburban women, who are poised to play an outsized role in the fight for the House majority this November.

Two-thirds of Americans do not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, according to a poll released Friday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Among women of reproductive age, three out of four want the high court ruling left alone. The poll was conducted before Kennedy’s retirement was announced.

“The left is going to try very hard to say this is all about overturning Roe,” said Johnnie Moore, a Southern Baptist minister who was a co-chairman of the Trump campaign’s evangelical advisory board. The more significant shift on the high court, he said, would likely be the help given to conservatives in their fight for what they call religious freedom.

Tony Perkins, who leads the socially conservative Family Research Council, said abortion was simply “a factor” in evangelicals’ excitement over a more conservative Supreme Court. He suggested that public opinion was already shifting against abortion rights, although that’s not true of the Roe v. Wade ruling, which has become slightly more popular over time.

Perkins agreed with Moore that the broader push for religious freedom was a bigger conservative focus.

Many evangelicals, for example, have lashed out against Obama-era laws that required churches and other religious institutions to provide their employees with women’s reproductive services, including access to abortion and birth control. Others have rallied behind private business owners who faced legal repercussions after denying services to gay people.

Yet sweeping restrictions to abortion rights are certainly on the table, Moore noted.

“There is a high level of confidence within the community that overturning Roe is actually, finally possible,” Moore said. He added: “Evangelicals have never been more confident in the future of America than they are now. It’s just a fact.”

In Alabama, Tom Parker, a Republican associate justice on the state Supreme Court who is campaigning to become the state’s chief justice, explicitly raised the potential of sending cases to Washington that would lead to the overturning of key rulings, including Roe v. Wade.

“President Trump is just one appointment away from giving us a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court,” Parker said in an interview on the radio program Wallbuilders Live. “And they are going to need cases that they can use to reverse those horrible decisions of the liberal majority in the past that have undermined the Constitution and really just abused our own personal rights.”

Despite Trump’s struggles with Christian values in his personal life at times, skeptical evangelical Christians lined up behind him in the 2016 election, and they remain one of his most loyal constituencies.

The president’s standing with white evangelical Christians hit an all-time high in April when 75 percent of evangelicals held a favorable view of Trump, according to a poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute.

The unlikely marriage between the thrice-married president and Christian conservatives has always been focused on Trump’s ability to re-shape the nation’s judicial branch.

On the day she endorsed candidate Trump in March 2016, the late iconic anti-abortion activist Phyllis Schlafly first asked him privately whether he would appoint more judges like the conservative Antonin Scalia, recalled Schlafly’s successor Ed Martin, who was in the room at the time. Trump promised he would.

The president followed through with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch less than a month after his inauguration, delighting religious conservatives nationwide. And the Trump White House, while disorganized in other areas, made its relationship with the religious right a priority.

The first private White House meeting between evangelical leaders and senior Trump officials came in the days after the Gorsuch nomination, said Moore, who was in attendance. He said the White House has hosted roughly two dozen similar meetings since then in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.

A senior administration official such as Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump or Kellyanne Conway — if not Trump himself — has always been present, Moore added. Each meeting featured a detailed briefing on the administration’s push to fill judicial openings.

“The courts have been at the very center of the relationship,” Moore said.

And now, as the focus shifts toward the president’s next Supreme Court nomination, evangelical leaders who once held their noses and voted for Trump have little doubt he will pick someone who shares their conservative views on abortion, same-sex marriage and other social issues.

Falwell insisted only that Trump make his next selection from the list of prospective nominees he released before his election. All are believed to oppose the Roe v. Wade ruling.

Any deviation from the list, Falwell said, would be “a betrayal.” He noted, however, that he’s in weekly contact with the White House and has supreme confidence that the president will deliver.

“This is a vindication for the 80 percent of evangelicals who supported Trump. Many of them voted on this issue alone,” Falwell said. “Today’s a day that we as evangelicals, and really all average Americans, can say we told you so.”

Shak Lakhani, the  21-year-old chief executive and co-founder of Avro Life Science, started researching biomaterials when he was 15 years old.

Every summer and after school the teenager would travel nearly two hours by bus and train from the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Toronto where he lived to the tissue engineering lab at the University of Toronto and develop three-dimensional, in-vitro models of tumors using biomaterials.

For three years, Lakhani worked in the lab, before going on to study nanotechnology engineering at the University of Waterloo a short 73 miles away. It was there, in his first year, that Lakhani met another Richmond Hill resident, Keean Sarani, and launched Avro Life Science.

Sarani, also 21, had his own history in life sciences. A former epidemiologist who worked as a research assistant at the aptly named Hospital for Sick Children, Sarani spent his high school years working in community pharmacies before going on to graduate from the University of Waterloo with both an Honours Science degree and a doctorate in pharmacy directly from high school.

Sarani and Lakhani, who’re related by marriage, first met in the Village 1 dormitory complex at the university. Within months of their first meeting the two decided to start working on the company that would become Avro.

They formally launched the business in January 2016, a time when Lakhani said the two college students would hold “startup Sundays” where they would pitch ideas to each other in one dorm room or another on Sunday evenings, until they found an idea that seemed viable.

Given their experience — Sarani in pharmacies and treating patients and Lakhani in chemistry and material science, the two hit on the idea of drug delivery and patches.

Avro Life Science co-founders Keean Sarani and Shak Lakhani

The two initially toyed with a multivitamin patch for daily health, but through the sniffles, watery eyes and sneezes of perennial allergy sufferers the two hit on the idea of an antihistamine patch to cure their own ailments.

The two won their first pitch competition three months after hitting on the initial idea in March 2016, and formally incorporated their business in November 2016.

Fast-forward two years and the two co-founders are just about ready to make the final preparations for the first product with help from an initial seed round from investors led by Fifty Years, with participation from Susa Ventures, Garage Capital, Heuristic Capital, Embark Ventures, Uphonest Capital and Buckley Endeavours. Individual angel investors also participated in the round. In all, Avro has about $2.2 million in the bank.

According to Lakhani, the company has already developed a polymer that allows Avro to make patches that can deliver hundreds of different drugs. Now it’s just a matter of gearing up for clinical trials that the company will run before the end of the year.

The first product, Lakhani says, is “a medicated sticker for seasonal allergies.” The company’s plan to get to market involves revitalizing drugs that pharma companies haven’t been able to bring to market because oral delivery is difficult, Lakhani says.

“Really the breakthrough is the [proprietary] combination of materials that can hold all of these different drugs,” he said. “The method of drug delivery is the same as in nicotine patches. In our case as a result of the polymer and manufacturing method…. [the drugs] don’t bond with the polymer. They are micro-adhesives in the patch. Heat from the skin dissolves the polymer and allows the drugs to enter the blood stream.”

Basically, there are tiny bubbles on the patch and contact with (and heat from) the skin causes the bubbles to break and deliver any drugs in an unadulterated form to the bloodstream, Lakhani explained.

Because the company is using generic drugs for its first tests, it’s hoping to have an easier path to market to prove the viability of its delivery system.

Down the road, the company also has some pretty impressive pharmaceutical partners that it could tap. Avro is already working with Bayer as part of their accelerator program in Toronto, and that may lead to a deeper relationship down the road, according to Lakhani.

The first drug that the company is testing is Loratadine (a common antihistamine).

“In the coming years, we envision bringing a number of other patches to market for drugs addressing neurodegenerative diseases, cardiac health, analgesics and many more to improve drug delivery and compliance while revitalizing pharma pipelines,” Lakhani wrote in an email. “One day we hope to allow large pharmaceutical companies to ‘rescue’ drugs that they spent billions of dollars developing, but failed trials due to low bioavailability, high liver toxicity from an entire pill being metabolized at once.”

For Fifty Years co-founder Seth Bannon, Avro’s technology is a “Holy Grail” for drug delivery that can save pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars.

“The market for this is absolutely massive. Initially, Avro can manufacture and sell patches carrying generics direct to consumer to address issues like compliance with children and the elderly,” wrote Bannon, in an email. “Because Avro can deliver many drugs transdermally… When you deliver drugs transdermally, you significantly reduce liver toxicity and boost bioavailability. This means pharma can rescue drugs that just barely failed in Phase III. Pharma will pay a lot for this.”

“Good artists borrow great artists steal” is a phrase that Facebook seems acutely aware of.

It’s common to speak of Instagram, the Facebook-owned photo-app-now-social-network, borrowing from Snapchat, but now Facebook’s WhatsApp chat app is increasingly drawing its innovation from others such as Telegram.

This week, WhatsApp outed a new feature for its groups that is essentially a replica of Telegram’s channels — that is, a one-way broadcast communication stream.

Telegram channels are popular for setting up a broadcast news feed that allows people to sign up to get alerts from channel admins, who might be news agencies, companies, schools, public interest groups or more. Now WhatsApp is adding the feature to give its message app new use cases.

Actually, as is often the case for WhatsApp, users have unofficially adopted channel-like behavior for some time. Last year, for example, there were reports of a rural journalist using the messaging app to report and broadcast local news. Doing that is suddenly a whole lot easier through this new ‘broadcast-only’ feature.

“One way people use groups is to receive important announcements and information, including parents and teachers at schools, community centers, and non-profit organizations. We’ve introduced this new setting so admins can have better tools for these use cases,” WhatsApp wrote in a short blog post.

Still, the fact that WhatsApp requires users to provide a phone number to join groups — anyone’s number can be looked up by any group member — is one issue when it comes to creating or joining public groups. Telegram has introduced usernames, which mitigate that issue, but still, the app doesn’t have anything like WhatsApp’s scale which is a crucial consideration when deciding which app to plump for.

WhatsApp has over 1.5 billion active users, more than 200 million of which are in India, whereas Telegram recently passed 200 million active users worldwide.

In the world of mobile payment systems, Google had a bit of an identity crisis until earlier this year. Their services once included Android Pay, Google Wallet, and Pay with Google. The Android Pay app was a digital wallet that used NFC to make payments. Google Wallet was a peer-to-peer payment service for people to send and receive money. Pay with Google used the Google Payment API to allow users to make payments via Google Assistant or web browsers with any card on file with their Google account. To reduce confusion, Google introduced the “Google Pay” brand at the beginning of 2018 to unify these services. However, Google Wallet remained a separate app (though it was rebranded as “Google Pay Send”). Now, it seems that the Google Pay Send features are nearly ready to be integrated into the main app.

Google Pay services. Source: Google.

We were told this integration would be happening back during the initial rollout of the Pay service. Specifically, the integration would be rolling out “within the next few months,” though we haven’t heard any further news in the four months that have passed. Regardless, it appears that the former Google Wallet features are already fully functional in the standard Pay app, and furthermore, the peer-to-peer payments even work in the United Kingdom (the Pay Send app doesn’t work in the U.K.)

The integration was discovered by XDA Recognized Developer Quinny899 (Kieron Quinn of Mighty Quinn Apps) and confirmed by us. With the Google Pay Send app uninstalled, we were able to activate the peer-to-peer payment functionality within the standard app and successfully send a payment. As you can see in the screenshots below, a new “send money” tab appears in the bottom toolbar. Tapping on this brings us to a page where we can send or request money from either an existing contact or new contact. Even a group request can be made on this page.

Once this feature rolls out in the U.S. and U.K., you’ll no longer need to install the separate Google Pay Send app to take advantage of the peer-to-peer payment functionality. For now, you’ll have to keep both apps installed if you want to send or receive money to or from other people.

Price: Free

We’ll keep an eye out on any new Pay features that we spot. The service continues to become more useful over time with new features like support for mobile boarding passes and event tickets (…almost like a wallet, no?) and sending money via Google Assistant.

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Nearly 3.5 billion people are expected to watch the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. They’ll all see players wearing a fresh batch of national jerseys, designed by the major sport product manufacturers. Millions of authentic tops are made for fans to buy. Even more are counterfeited.

Before I became a professor of sports product design at the University of Oregon, I spent about 20 years working for a major sports manufacturer on innovative products, for events like the World Cup and the Champions League Final. Sport manufacturers such as Adidas, Nike, New Balance, Puma, Uhlsport, Umbro and Under Armour start research and product development two to three years before a World Cup begins. Jerseys must represent teams’ countries, perform for elite athletes and be desirable for fans. They must also deter counterfeiting, which undermines the only real way jersey manufacturers can recoup their design and production investments.

Following the rules

The jerseys must first obey guidelines set by FIFA, soccer’s international governing body. Some are pretty basic – like making sure players’ jerseys aren’t easily confused with referees’ shirts, and that they have sleeves; soccer jerseys can’t be tank tops.

Other rules are more detailed, like banning jerseys that have more than four colors, unless they’re striped or checkered in two equal colors – in which case the jersey can use five colors.

There are also specific rules about the size and placement of logos – including the manufacturer’s own, and stars indicating how many World Cups a team has won – and player names and numbers. FIFA even specifies that both sleeves must be free of logos, to make room for its own event badges.

Satisfying the customer

Following FIFA’s rules is a must, but the ultimate approval of each nation’s jersey designs comes from its national soccer governing federation. The manufacturer has the ideas, but the federation officials need to be convinced to go along with their new design aesthetics and performance innovations.

Often the sports product manufacturer will ask the soccer federations for a list of aesthetic and performance criteria upfront. Some countries have really detailed lists, perhaps governed by tradition or superstition. Others are more open to new ideas – like Nigeria, which approved striking designs by Nike for World Cup 2018.

Typically a jersey manufacturer will come up with a few ideas for each home and away jersey. Often they’ll include designs that look a lot like the team’s last World Cup jersey, others that are very different and still others somewhere in between the old design and a brand new one. The company usually hopes it’ll be allowed to create something at least relatively new, rather than just remaking a design from the past.

The manufacturer’s design touch

The company making the jersey can add some design elements, too – but of course they must be approved by FIFA and the national federation. Some of these – like the neckline – are aesthetic features that may have a historical nod to each nation’s heritage.

Other elements can combine appearance and function, like the cut and fit of the jersey, ventilation or how its materials handle sweat. There are also aspects of the design intended to deter counterfeiting; for the 2018 World Cup, many of the major sport manufacturers developed engineered knit jersey materials that help with thermoregulation and fit, while providing a unique appearance that is difficult to knock-off without the exact machinery and programming skills.

The manufacturers will lab-test the materials, and then let elite players confidentially test the physical designs, on pitch, during training sessions.

Protecting the design

To curtail counterfeiting, some manufacturers will embed electronic tags in their authentic jerseys, making it easy to check whether a merchant is selling real or fake products. Many large manufacturers will have teams of inspectors shopping international markets, online and at shipping ports, looking for counterfeits and working with local police to shut down sales and exportation.

Total prevention is impossible, though – and it’s made harder when supplies of the real thing sell out. The Nigeria jersey sold out, making Nike a fair profit, but now it’s making Chinese and Thai counterfeiters millions of dollars too, because there are no more authentic versions available. When FIFA guidelines, federation and manufacturer desires align, new World Cup jersey designs can be an exciting part of the tournament experience for fans around the world.

These days, it seems like everyone with extra cash has some kind of pricey drinking habit. It might be fine wine, craft beer or cocktails. Or it could come in the form of coconut water, cold-pressed juice or the latest frothy caffeinated concoction.

No matter what your preference, startups and their backers likely have you covered.

In a follow-up to our story earlier this month about food startups gobbling up venture funding, Crunchbase News is taking a look at beverage companies guzzling capital. We found that while drinkables receive a smaller portion of funding than edibles, it’s still a sector that draws hundreds of millions of dollars in annual investment.

Where are investors pouring all that money? Some unlikely places. For instance, it appears the largest funding recipient so far this year is a China-based chain called Hey Tea that’s well known for a specialty called cheese tea. (An unfortunately named, slightly salty iced drink that a Crunchbase News team sampling determined was actually pretty tasty.)

Besides cheese tea, we found startups are also raising millions to bottle deep ocean water, customize instant coffee and make your party punch more portable.

Bottom line: So long as there are profit margins to squeeze out, the quest continues for new ways to get you drunk, hydrated or caffeinated. Below, we look at what’s trending on all these fronts.

Hydrate

Venture investors and startup entrepreneurs are betting there are highly scalable businesses to be built in doling out more exotic varieties of water, coconut-based beverages and other drinks to hydrate calorie-conscious consumers.

An analysis of Crunchbase data unearthed at least a dozen companies developing new varieties of water and fitness drinks that have raised funding in recent quarters.

Funding data reveals that investors still see the potential for significant returns from coconut water. The largest round in the hydration category went to Harmless Harvest, a seller of fair trade, organic coconut water and probiotic drinks that recently raised $30 million. The funding comes as the sector is on a tear, with the U.S. spending alone on coconut water projected to reach $2 billion next year.

We also saw a couple of deals involving startups offering alternatives to bottled or tap water. The most heavily capitalized one to receive funding in the past couple of years appears to be FloWater, a Denver-based startup that provides pure water refill stations and has raised about $8 million to date. Meanwhile, bottled water is still generating attention, too, as evidenced by the $5.5 million round late last year for Kona Deep, a bottler of deep ocean water.

Intoxicate

You may need water to survive, but if you’re looking to secure venture capital, it helps to throw in a bit of alcohol.

Since last year, venture investors have poured more than $300 million into an assortment of companies providing alcoholic beverages, drinking gadgetry and services to connect consumers with booze. Crunchbase News highlighted about a dozen that raised sizable rounds, along with one hangover cure startup.

Some of the larger funding rounds are for companies that don’t make alcohol; instead, these startups offer easier ways to select and buy it. These include Vivino, a popular wine rating app, as well as Drizly and Saucey, two ordering and delivery services.

There are emerging brands in the mix, too, including BeatBox Beverages, a purveyor of party punch in portable packages; Milestone Brands, a producer of organic tequilas and other spirits; and Plum, which has a gadget for dispensing good wine by the glass.

Caffeinate

If too much drinking makes you sleepy, let caffeine come to the rescue. Venture investors, known to be heavy consumers of caffeine, also seem to like investing in the stuff.

Using Crunchbase data, we highlighted more than a dozen companies in the coffee and tea space that have secured good-sized rounds in roughly the past year. They range from fast-growing chains, like China’s Hey Tea, to packaged drinks, like non-dairy blended drink maker Willow Cup, to instant beverage innovators, like Sudden Coffee. We even found a blockchain company in the mix, Crypto N Kafe, which aims to connect coffee farmers and consumers directly.

It’s not a bad area for exits, either. The most recent significant exit was Blue Bottle Coffee, a venture-backed brand known for really, really strong brews that sold a majority stake to Nestlé last September at a valuation of over $700 million.

Nourish

One additional beverage category in which we saw a high level of activity was in meal-replacement and nutrition drinks. Overall, we found at least a half-dozen companies developing nutritional drinks that have raised funding in recent quarters.

In this sector, probably the best-known startup name is Soylent, which has raised over $70 million for a line of drinks marketed to consumers who don’t have the time or inclination to sit down for a traditional meal. We also found a potential rival, meal-replacement beverage maker Ample, which secured angel funding last month.

The biggest round in the past couple of months for the space, however, went to REBBL, a startup that raised $20 million in May for its line of bottled drinks featuring health-promoting herbs, protein and coconut.

Mix it all up: Caffeinated, full and buzzed

Beverage investments, like everything else, aren’t always a home run for VCs. The demise of juicer startup Juicero last year offers a cautionary tale that large rounds don’t always translate into compelling business models.

That said, beverage purveyors don’t have to worry much about demand drying up. People will always be thirsty. And while we typically quench our thirst with simple tap or filtered water, where’s the fun (or the massive exit potential) in that?

Methodology

Our analysis focused primarily on companies that have secured funding in the past year; however, we also included some rounds outside those parameters that were exceptionally large or noteworthy in other ways.

In partnership with TechCrunch, The Europas Unconference & Awards, features smaller breakout sessions on key subjects for startups, followed by a glittering awards show for the hottest startups in Europe, based on voting by expert judges and the industry itself. Plus loads of networking opportunities with investors, and the super-fun Pitch Rolette pitch competition. See below for your special discount offer!

Just some of the investors coming to The Europas this Tuesday, July 3, in London include:

Alliott Cole, Octopus Ventures

Andrei Brasoveanu, Accel Partners

Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Seedcamp

Damir Bandolo, Columbus Capital

Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital

Eze Vidra, Reimagine Ventures

George McDonuagh, KR1 (Blockchain/Crypto)

Jamie Burke, Outlier Ventures (Blockchain/Crypto)

Jason Ball, Qualcomm Ventures

Jeremy Yap, Angel Investor

Joe White, Entrepreneur First

Maria Wagner, Beringea

Michael Jackson, Mangrove Capital Partners

Nancy Fechnay, Angel Investor (Blockchain/Crypto)

Paul Dowling, Dreamstake Ventures

Richard Muirhead, Fabric Ventures (Blockchain/Crypto)

Scott Sage, Crane Venture Partners

Sitar Teli, Connect Ventures

Stephanie Hospital, OneRagtime

Suzanne Ashman, LocalGlobe

Thomas Graham, TLDR Capital

Tugce Ergul, Angel Labs

Vishal Gulati, Draper Esprit

Wendy Tan White, BGF

Instead of thousands and thousands of people, think of a great summer event with a selected 800 of the most interesting and useful people in the industry, including key investors and leading entrepreneurs.

Here’s the agenda.

And here’s 14 reasons to attend The Europas:

• Ultra-high quality Investors, speakers & featured guests

• New startup founders brought into the eco-system

• New deal-flow for investors

• Our “Diversity Matters” Free pass bringing in more women and POC

• Expert speeches, discussions, and Q&A

• Intimate “breakout” sessions with key players on vertical topics

• The opportunity to meet almost everyone in those small groups, super-charging your networking

• Convivial, relaxed atmosphere conducive to networking

• Key press including WSJ, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, attending

• A stunning awards dinner and party which honors both the hottest startups and the leading lights in the European startup scene

• Content independently curated by journalists

• The only truly independent, industry-backed awards in Europe

• Percentage of profits will be donated to charity

• All on one day to maximize your time in London

Plus, as a special offer for TechCrunch readers, we have discounted tickets of up to 60% off:

• Daytime conference plus evening awards tickets (£250, 60% discount) (valid all day, July 3rd) – this ticket includes the daytime conference and the awards dinner with ceremony and after party. It includes refreshments and lunch during the conference, and the awards drinks reception and dinner.

• Daytime only, Unconference tickets (£75, 60% discount) – this ticket includes the afternoon Unconference only.

• Evening Awards-only tickets (£195, 60% discount) – this ticket is for the awards dinner with ceremony and after party. It includes the awards drinks reception and dinner.

If you wish to sponsor the events or to purchase a table for 10 or 12 guest or a half table for 5 guests, please contact [email protected]

The conference and awards are supported by TechCrunch, the official media partner. Attendees, nominees, and winners will get deep discounts to TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin, later this year.

TechCrunch is excited to announce that the Startup Battlefield Latin America is coming to São Paulo on November 8 this year. This is the first event TechCrunch has ever held in Latin America, and we are all in to make it a memorable one to support the fast-emerging startup ecosystem in the region.

The Startup Battlefield is TechCrunch’s premier startup competition, which over the past 12 years has placed 750 companies on stage to pitch top VCs and TechCrunch editors. Those founders have gone on to raise more than $8 billion and produce more than 100 exits. Startup Battlefield Latin America aims to add 15 great founders from Latin America to those elite ranks.

Here’s how the competition works. Founders may apply now to participate in Startup Battlefield. Any early stage (pre-A round) company with a working product headquartered in an eligible Latin American country (see list below) may apply. Applications close August 6. TechCrunch editors will review the applications and, based on which applicants have the strongest potential for a big exit of major societal impact, pick 15 to compete on November 8. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield team will work intensively with each founding team to hone their six-minute pitch to perfection.

Then it’s game day. The 15 companies will take the stage at São Paulo’s Tomie Ohtake Institute in front of a live audience of 500 people to pitch top-tier VC judges. The judges and TechCrunch editors will pick five for a finals round. Those lucky finalists will face a fresh team of judges, and one will emerge as the winner of the first-ever Startup Battlefield Latin America. The winner takes home $25,000 and a trip for two to the next Disrupt, where they can exhibit free of charge in the Startup Alley and may also qualify to participate in the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt. Sweet deal. All Startup Battlefield sessions will be captured on video and posted on TechCrunch.com.

It’s an experience no founder would want to miss, considering the opportunity to join the ranks of Battlefield greats from years past, including Dropbox, Yammer, Mint, Getaround, CloudFlare, Vurb and many more.

Get that application started now.

Here’s the need-to-know about qualifying to apply:

• Have an early-stage company in “launch” stage
• Headquartered in one of these countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela (Central America) Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Panama (Caribbean – including dependencies and constituent entities), Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.
• Have a fully working product/beta reasonably close to, or in, production
• Have received limited press or publicity to date
• Have no known intellectual property conflicts
• Apply by Aug. 6, 2018, at 5 p.m. PST

Tickets to attend Startup Battlefield Latin America will go on sale soon. Interested in sponsoring the event, contact us here

Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky, who has served on Snap’s board of directors since December 2012, is not expected to stand for re-election to Snap’s board of directors and will thus be stepping down, according to a report by The Information.

Early investors stepping down from the board of directors — or at least not seeking re-election — isn’t that uncommon as once-private companies grow into larger public ones. Benchmark partner Peter Fenton did not seek re-election for Twitter’s board of directors in April last year. As Snap continues to navigate its future, especially as it has declined precipitously since going public and now sits at a valuation of around $16.5 billion. Partners with an expertise in the early-stage and later-stage startup life cycle may end up seeing themselves more useful taking a back seat and focusing on other investments. The voting process for board member re-election happens during the company’s annual meeting, so we’ll get more information when an additional proxy filing comes out ahead of the meeting later this year.

Benchmark is, or at least was at the time of going public last year, one of Snap’s biggest shareholders. According to the company’s 424B filing prior to going public in March last year, Benchmark held ownership of 23.1% of Snap’s Class B common stock and 8.2% of Snap’s Class A common stock. Lasky has been with Benchmark since April 2007, and also serves on the boards of a number of gaming companies like Riot Games and thatgamecompany, the creators of PlayStation titles flower and Journey. At the time, Snap said in its filing that Lasky was “qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors due to his extensive experience with social media and technology companies, as well as his experience as a venture capitalist investing in technology companies.”

The timing could be totally coincidental, but an earlier Recode report suggested Lasky had been talking about stepping down in future funds for Benchmark. The firm only recently wrapped up a very public battle with Uber, which ended up with Benchmark selling a significant stake in the company and a new CEO coming in to replace co-founder Travis Kalanick. Benchmark hired its first female general partner, Sarah Tavel, earlier this year.

We’ve reached out to both Snap and a representative from Benchmark for comment and will update the story when we hear back.

Today at “Muscle Beach” in Venice, Calif., Netflix and Lyft joined forces for a promotional campaign in support of the streaming media site’s (really excellent) dramatization of the origin story for the women’s wrestling league — GLOW (or the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling).

Your intrepid reporter was taking a walk on the beach and stumbled upon the marketing stunt (which was kind of genius).

For those of y’all who don’t know, Muscle Beach is sort of a mecca for weight lifters and body builders — including, back in the ’80s, a young Ah-nold Schwarzenegger. A history that made it an ideal spot to celebrate Netflix’s (pretty terrific) ode to all things new wave-d, hair metal-ed, neon accented, high-waisted, cocaine addled and muscle-bound.

Members of the cast posed for pictures, and wrestlers engaged in training sessions and ’80s-themed exercise classes throughout the day.

The activation will be up for the next week and included a Reebok pop-up with limited-edition ’80s styles; a photo booth and costumes for pictures; free copies of Paper Magazine and trading cards emblazoned with the pictures of each of the most popular characters from the show.

The day wasn’t without incident. Some Muscle Beach-goers got into a war of words with security over the event’s unannounced takeover of the basketball courts adjacent to the “beach.”

The second season of “GLOW” dropped today on Netflix.

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The U.S. House of Representatives failed to pass major immigration legislation Wednesday, after weeks of debate and mixed messages of support from President Donald Trump. The bill’s failure leaves 1.8 million undocumented young people without a solution, while the problem of addressing the family separation crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border that has galvanized American public opinion remains. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.

It is the time in Bollywood where Star Kids are getting more famous day by day and the media always try to cover them first wherever they go or are spotted. From Taimur Ali Khan to Misha Kapoor, they are all favourites to media and to many fans also. Salman Khan’s nephew Ahil Sharma is one of them. Ahil, son of Salman’s dearest sister Arpita Khan and Aayush Sharma is very much famous as he is the nephew of Salman.

Many times Ahil’s videos have gone viral on social media with Mamu Salman and this time Ahil got caught with all his giggling and cute smile and another video in which Sonakshi Sinha is doing exercise and lil Ahil is checking her around like a trainer. Have a look at this too cute videos of Ahil:

Earlier, Salman and Ahil’s video went viral on the social media which is too adorable. In the video, Ahil was about to feed food to Salman but notoriously he didn’t and pull back his hand.

Salman has many cute moments with his nephew Ahil and here are some pictures, have a look:

Recently, Ahil went to the Disney Land which is a dreamland not only to kids but also for the adult ones. along with Ahil was his mommy Arpita and Jacqueline enjoying her free time.

Soon Ahil’s daddy Aayush Sharma is going to debut in Bollywood through Love Ratri and Salman is the one who is introducing his sister’s husband to the film industry.

Even Aayush told a leading daily talking about his debut that “Salman Bhai was certain he wouldn’t give me a film till he felt I’m ready to face the camera.

Talking about Salman, his latest venture Race 3 did well on the Box Office but is criticised by many fans and also by the critics for the storyline. Salman will be next seen in Ali Abbas’s BHARAT alongside Priyanka Chopra who is making a comeback after 2 years.

Published by Soniya Kaur on 29 Jun 2018

Google’s stock keyboard app for Nexus and Pixel smartphones, Gboard, is my go-to keyboard ever since Swype for Android was discontinued. The popular keyboard app for Android devices recently received the ability to create GIFs but the last update that added a feature I would call “smart” was back in February with the addition of email address autocompletion. Now, it appears that a feature hinted at in teardowns back in January is nearing completion as Gboard tests smart replies to messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Allo, Snapchat, and more.

The feature is currently in development and was discovered by XDA Recognized Developer Quinny899 (Kieron Quinn of Mighty Quinn Apps). Setting up the feature requires first opening up a notification that has a quick reply box then tapping on the suggestion to enable the feature in Gboard’s autocomplete bar. Gboard will then request that you grant it the notification access permission.

Once granted, you will start receiving smart replies for messages from the following applications:

• Android Messages


• Facebook Messenger


• Facebook Messenger Lite


• Google Allo


• Google Hangouts


• Snapchat


• WhatsApp


• WeChat

We tested the feature out with Hangouts, though it works with the other mentioned apps too like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Allo, and Snapchat. We obtained the list of supported apps by performing a teardown of the latest version of Google’s keyboard app. At this URL, we can see that Google is still tweaking the TensorFlow machine learning model used for smart replies. The latest update to the model was on May 14th, 2018.

Personally, I prefer having smart replies in Gboard rather than using the ‘Reply‘ app. Sure, the Reply app supports more apps, but since it involves replacing the actual notification of the original messaging app there are some annoyances like the fact that dismissing the notification on the desktop client (say Android Messages for Web) won’t clear the notification on Android. On the other hand, the Reply app will work for apps like Facebook Messenger, Allo, Snapchat, or WhatsApp regardless of your keyboard app which is nice.

Price: Free

Smart reply features have made their way into a bunch of Google apps and services lately. Non-Project Fi Android Messages users just started getting it and the major desktop Gmail redesign also brings along such functionality. We’ll keep an eye out for when the smart reply feature rolls out on Android, especially if it makes its way over to Chromebooks.

In case you’re wondering, the missing back button in the first set of screenshots is from a special ADB command I ran to make the back button invisible. The navigation bar in the second set of screenshots is missing because I had enabled the new OnePlus-style gestures in the XDA Navigation Gestures app. Lastly, the quick settings panel is themed thanks to Substratum supporting rooted Android P devices.

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Have you ever waited for your bus at a bus stop for a very long time – only to be greeted by two or more buses arriving together?

This phenomenon, known as “bus bunching,” is a problem that bus transit systems around the world have been trying to solve for decades. During this time, researchers have used mathematical models to study the behavior of bus transit systems to better understand why this happens. The mathematics identify what causes this problem – and also suggests that bus-tracking technology can be combined with simple control algorithms to improve the situation.

Bunching is annoying for riders, since it increases both the average time spent waiting for the bus and the variability in this waiting time.

Bunching also makes the bus system less reliable, because it causes buses to get off schedule. The long waits induced by bunching can also cause people to shift away from buses toward other, less sustainable modes of transportation.

Bus bunching occurs because bus routes are inherently unstable. When the buses are on schedule, everything seems to work fine. They travel from stop to stop, waiting at each for passengers to exit or climb aboard. However, once a bus gets behind schedule, it’s nearly impossible for it to get back on track. It will continue to get further and further behind schedule until the next bus on the route catches up.

The same thing happens to buses that are early: They continue to get earlier and earlier as they travel through their route, until they catch up to the bus just ahead.

Equations that describe how buses move along a route identify why this happens. The time buses spend serving passengers at a stop is related to the amount of time between consecutive bus arrivals, commonly known as bus headway. When a bus runs late, its headway increases and more passengers arrive that need to be served at its next stop. But the more passengers waiting at a stop, the longer a bus needs to spend there. So late buses need to spend more time at each subsequent stop, causing them to run even later. The opposite happens for a bus that’s early. This cycle continues until multiple buses eventually catch up to each other and bunch.

So what can be done to stop this? Transit agencies have worked with researchers such as ourselves to propose many different ideas to eliminate bus bunching.

One strategy is to instruct late buses to skip stops where passengers don’t need to get off or to limit the number of people allowed to board late buses at each stop. Both of these allows the late bus to spend less time at each stop, which allows it the opportunity to catch up. Of course, doing so can leave potential users stranded.

Another common strategy is to build more time than needed into a bus’s schedule. This additional time – called slack – helps accommodate the variability in bus travel time. Buses that are early are instructed to hold at selected stops until the scheduled time to depart. However, this strategy does not help late buses recover. It’s also susceptible to any disturbances that cause buses to get off schedule. Delaying or holding buses in this way also reduces the speed at which passengers can travel along the route.

New technology may be able to help. Transit agencies can now track the location of buses in real time and offer tailored feedback to drivers. These novel strategies treat consecutive buses as if they were all connected by springs. Buses that are too close together along the route are given instructions to help “push” them apart, while buses that are too far apart are given information to help “pull” them back together. Drivers might be told to spend this much extra time to spend at a stop or to travel that much slower or faster along a route.

Researchers have developed algorithms that agencies can use to provide such instructions to individual buses and avoid bus bunching. These instructions could be sent from dispatchers at the transit agency who monitor the system and provide simple guidance to drivers or through on-board computers that calculate exactly what drivers should do to prevent bunching automatically. Computer simulations and field tests suggest that these dynamic strategies may one day make bunching a thing of the past.