Category: Technology

The popular dating app Hinge is rolling out “Selfie Verification” in an effort to help confirm the authenticity of its users. 

The tool uses a combination of technology and human moderators to compare profile photos with a video selfie taken in real time within the app.

After the selfie is captured, facial recognition technology compares facial geometries to photos on the user’s profile, 

Facial geometry data is deleted following verification, usually within a period of 24 hours.

TECH TIP: HOW TO QUICKLY FIND AND SEARCH PHOTOS YOU’VE SENT

Once the selfie is confirmed, a “Verified” badge is added to the user’s profile.

To detect fraud, machine-learning technology is in place and Hinge has trained content monitors. 

For example, there are automatic scans of profiles for red-flag language and images, device fingerprinting and photo hashtags, and manual reviews of suspicious profiles, activities and user-generated reports. 

BEREAL TAKES OFF: NEW SOCIAL MEDIA APP IS CONSIDERED ‘ANTI-INSTAGRAM’

Hinge also blocks email and IP addresses as well as other identifiers associated with known bad actors. 

“At Hinge, our team utilizes a series of AI and machine learning tools that proactively remove potentially fraudulent accounts before a user ever sees them or before harm can occur. We also continuously invest in innovative technology and moderation tools to help prevent and disrupt potential harm,” a Hinge spokesperson told F. “Next month, Hinge is rolling out Selfie Verification globally as an additional step to help users confirm the authenticity of profiles.”

HONG KONG, CHINA – 2018/12/02: In this photo illustration, the online dating app Hinge logo is seen displayed on an Android mobile device with a figure of hacker in the background. 
((Photo Illustration by Miguel Candela/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images))

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Selfie Verification will be available to all users in December.

Wired reported on an increase in fake Hinge accounts. The outlet said a Match Group spokeswoman confirmed photographic verification would be coming to Hinge, OKCupid and Match.com in the coming months.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, reports of romance scams hit a record $547 million in 2021.

Google, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines help you find information from the web. But it’s hard to find documents, messages, meetings, and emails from your own accounts. You need to go to different applications to find things that might be related to one project. A Y-Combinator-backed app called Needl is helping users with that.

Needl is a cross-platform application that lets you search across your local filesystem and accounts like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Notion, and Slack. The free version — available on the web, Windows, and Mac — lets you connect a single account per integration. If you need more account connections and integrations like Jira and Linear, you will need to pay $10 per month.

The application is simple to set up and use: once you install it on your system, it will ask you to connect your Google, Slack, and Notion accounts. Once that’s done, you can search for files, events, emails, and other things across all these accounts and your local filesystem. You can filter these results by files, messages, events, tasks, and emails.

If you’re a keyboard ninja, the app has handy shortcuts for you to launch the interface and navigate around. Users can customize shortcuts to launch the app and jump to the home view. The default view on the app shows the Activity Feed, which will show you contextual information on different apps such as your upcoming meeting.

Needl founders Max Keenan, Angela Liu, and James Liu are all Chicago university alums and met at a hackathon. They worked on a few side projects like a tool to write essays using GPT-2 and a TikTok for blog posts. After university,  MaxKeenan in investment banking at Moelis while Angela Liu and James Liu joined Microsoft.

The trio said that they had to become organized once they joined their jobs and meticulously follow naming systems and folder structures to easily find info. They wanted to solve this problem of constantly and manually reorganizing information through search.

“We were looking for a problem that historically had never been solved, but improvements in language models would be able to solve. As we were onboarding virtually during the pandemic, it hit us right in the face — information was siloed across all of these different platforms and we could improve the search and discovery of info,” Keenan said in an email conversation with TechCrunch.

Image Credits: Needl

Needl team wrote the first line of code in June when it was in the Y-combinator’s summer 2022 cohort. The company has raised $2.5 million from various investors including Fuse, Y Combinator, Palm Drive Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, Collin Wallace and Nathan Wenzel.

The company rolled out the product under a closed beta to around 200 users in August. Now the company is making it available to everyone under public beta.

Keenan said the company wants to focus on improving its contextual and semantic search through large language models (LLM) over the next 12 months. Plus, the startup wants to add more premium integrations like Asana, Hubspot, and Salesforce.

The startup considers Glean, a startup powering enterprise search across apps, as one of its major competitors. In May, Glean raised $100 million in its series C funding round led by Sequoia with participation from Lightspeed, General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, and the Slack Fund at a $1 billion valuation post-money.

Keenan said that a major differentiation between Glean and Needl is the shorter setup time for the latter.

“Biggest difference from Glean is that our product is self-serve and can be set up in under 2 mins by anyone, regardless of company size. Glean sells through sales-led processes that require full company adoption, can take months, and are inaccessible to individuals or small teams,” he said.

Neeva, a search engine built by a former Google ad exec, also offers search features through app integrations. However, it is available only in the U.S. with European expansion underway.

Keenan said in long term, Needl wants to pre-empt the need for search and present information through its own recommendation engine.

Singapore may soon require retail investors to take a test and not use credit card payments and other forms of borrowing for trading cryptocurrencies, the central bank proposed on Wednesday in a series of stringent measures as the island nation looks to make citizens aware of the risks surrounding volatile assets.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a set of consultation papers that it’s worried that many retail customers may “not have sufficient knowledge of the risks of trading” digital payment tokens, which may lead them “to take on higher risks than they would otherwise have been willing, or are able, to bear.”

The central bank also proposed that crypto firms licensed under the nation’s Payments Services Act should not be allowed to lend to retail investors in a move that could topple many firms’ businesses.

While “this latter option is stricter than the regulatory treatment of retail customers’ securities under the SFA38,” the central bank acknowledged, “MAS is of the view that the heightened risk of consumer harm in this unregulated space may necessitate stricter measures for retail customers.”

Several popular crypto exchanges already require their customers to periodically sift through questionnaires before they are allowed to trade crypto and participate in derivatives trading. The central bank acknowledged [PDF] that a number of industry players are supportive of some form of assessment on the retail customer’s knowledge of risks, but said they should also disclose whenever they have a financial interest in the tokens they offer to customers.

The new guidelines, which are open to public consultation until December 21, also proposes that crypto service providers should not use incentives such as giving away free tokens or other gifts to court retail customers. It also proposed banning celebrity endorsements.

Stablecoin

The central bank has also proposed that stablecoin issuers make adequate disclosures about their tokens and hold reserve assets in cash, cash equivalent or debt securities that are “at least equivalent to 100% of the par value of the outstanding” tokens in circulation “at all times.”

The debt securities, the proposal says, should be issued by the central bank of the pegged currency or organizations that are both a governmental and international character with a credit rating of at least AA—.

“SCS [single-currency pegged stablecoins] issuers must obtain independent attestation, such as by external audit firms, that the reserve assets meet the above requirements on a monthly basis. This attestation, including the percentage value of the reserve assets in excess of the par value of outstanding SCS in circulation, must be published on the issuer’s website and submitted to MAS by the end of the following month (for the month being attested),” the proposal says [PDF], adding that issuers also must appoint an external auditor to conduct an annual audit of its reserve assets and submit the report to MAS.

The proposal marks a major shift in Singapore’s stance on crypto. Once a preferred global crypto hub for its policies, Singapore authorities have toughen their views of digital assets following the collapse of a series of firms including Terraform Labs’ stablecoin UST and native token LUNA, and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.

“The collapse of a number of cryptocurrency trading platforms, where a few had conducted staking or lending activities, had led to significant consumer harm,” the central bank said.

CNN
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When the National Security Agency sent a tweet Monday filled with garbled nonwords like “tpfccdlfdtte,” the Internet was confused, and intrigued.

Was the NSA drunk? Had a cat skittered across someone’s keyboard?

Or maybe the spy agency, under fire for eavesdropping on Americans, had accidentally blurted a secret of its own – a coded, classified message not meant for public eyes.

The truth proved to be less scandalous. Internet sleuths, armed with cryptogram-solving Web tools, solved the mystery in minutes. Turns out the nonsensical tweet was a coded recruiting pitch by the NSA, which is seeking code breakers to help decipher encrypted messages from potential terrorists.

The tweet was a basic “substitution cipher,” a code in which each letter of the alphabet is replaced by another.

Translated, it read (SPOILER ALERT for all you wannabe codebreakers): “Want to know what it takes to work at NSA? Check back each Monday in May as we explore careers essential to protecting our nation.”

When contacted by CNN, NSA spokeswoman Marci Green Miller said the Twitter account is run by the NSA recruitment office, which will post coded tweets each Monday for the rest of the month.

“NSA is known as the code makers and code breakers,” said Miller, who called the tweet “part of our recruitment efforts to attract the best and the brightest.”

If the intelligence agency wanted attention, it worked. Monday’s message has been retweeted more than 1,100 times, and most major media outlets have run articles about it.

In its efforts to attract top talent, the NSA has been known to recruit hackers and other computer wizards at cybersecurity conferences. The agency even set up a special page to woo attendees of DefCon, a shadowy hackers’ conference held each July in Las Vegas.

A job with the NSA requires a security clearance, of course. But the agency seems eager to recruit smart people – even, perhaps, those with minor arrest records.

“If you have a few, shall we say, indiscretions in your past, don’t be alarmed. You shouldn’t automatically assume you won’t be hired,” said the recruiting page. “If you’re really interested, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot.”

The NSA receives thousands of applications a month and is on target to meet its hiring goals for the current fiscal year, Miller said.

Matthew Aid, who wrote a book about the NSA , told CNN last year that NSA hackers focus on foreign militaries, governments and corporations, and are protected by multiple levels of secrecy.

Monday’s tweet was not the first time the NSA has sent a coded message on Twitter. The agency has posted three already this year to celebrate holidays, such as St. Patrick’s Day.

But it might signal a renewed effort by the embattled agency to attract new blood in the wake of revelations last year by leaker Edward Snowden. Documents leaked by Snowden showed the NSA ran a secret surveillance program to intercept Americans’ phone calls and Internet messages.

While hydrogen is still relatively niched as a fuel for electric vehicles, a startup in China is jumping ahead to embrace it for autonomous driving scenarios.

WeRide, one of the most funded robotaxi operators in China with investors including Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, said Tuesday it is joining hands with Hyundai to launch a “self-driving hydrogen-powered vehicle pilot zone” in Guangzhou, the southern metropolis where it’s headquartered.

The collaboration comes at a time when the research and production of clean hydrogen increasingly becomes a focal point for China, which has been striving to decarbonize its economy.

Details are scant from the announcement. It’s unclear when the pilot will kick off, what the scale of the trial is, or what exactly is being powered by hydrogen, which is considered one of the cleanest fuels as it is combined with oxygen to produce just water vapor and energy. But it won’t be surprising to see unmanned hydrogen vehicles roaming about the pilot zone since Hyundai has been betting big on the fuel.

Indeed, the announcement says that WeRide, Hyundai, and Hengyun, a Chinese power generation and supply company, will work together to “create demand for the use of hydrogen fuel cell battery in unmanned street cleaning and ride-hailing.”

In September last year, Hyundai said it planned to offer hydrogen cell fuel versions for all of its commercial vehicles by 2028. The tie-up with WeRide could expand the use case of its hydrogen products to robotaxis. Hydrogen-fuelled vehicles can recharge within minutes, making them an ideal medium for taxi operations if there’s enough refueling infrastructure.

Guangzhou is a natural choice for the experiment given Hyundai has been producing hydrogen fuel cell systems in the city since March 2021. When the facility opened last year, the South Korean auto giant set an annual target to produce “6,500 units, with a goal to gradually expand production capacity in line with Chinese market conditions and central government policies.”

China has made a big push to electrify its public transportation. In Shenzhen, the hardware capital of the world, nearly all buses and cabs run on lithium-ion battery packs. While the city has grown quieter with fresher air thanks to the initiative, battery safety and recycling remain big sticking points for the local authorities. Long lines often form at charging stations as it can take hours to fully refuel lithium-ion batteries.

CNN
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Orbital Sciences Corp. sent up its first entry into the space freight business Wednesday with the launch of a new unmanned cargo carrier to the International Space Station.

It’s the first flight for the company’s Cygnus spacecraft and the second for its Antares booster rocket. Liftoff was at 10:58 a.m. at NASA’s launch facility at Wallops Island, Virginia, about 90 miles north of Norfolk.

About 10 minutes after launch, a cheer went up in the company’s flight control room in Dulles, Virginia, outside Washington, when the craft separated from the second stage of the booster. Its solar arrays deployed successfully about 15 minutes later.

“The spacecraft is working really well right now,” Frank Culbertson, the head of Orbital’s advanced programs group and a former astronaut, told reporters after the launch.

Cygnus is slated to perform three days of tests before being cleared to approach the ISS and it’s scheduled to rendezvous with the space station until Sunday. The launch had been scheduled for Tuesday, but was postponed for a day because of bad weather and a technical glitch that delayed the craft’s roll-out on Friday, NASA said.

Unlike the SpaceX Dragon capsule, which is designed to be reused and eventually carry passengers, the can-shaped, 17-foot Cygnus is a one-shot craft that will burn up on re-entry after its flight to the space station. It carried about 1,500 pounds of cargo into orbit on Wednesday, but is capable of carrying up to 4,400 pounds (2,000 kilos), the company says.

After about a month, the craft will be packed with trash from the station and cut loose to burn up in the atmosphere, Culbertson said.

“It’s going to be an exciting and fascinating and interesting time for everybody involved,” he said.

NASA hired Orbital and SpaceX to start making cargo runs to the space station after retiring its fleet of space shuttles and turning much of its focus toward exploring deep into the solar system. Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to make eight flights to the space station under the space agency’s commercial supply program.

“We look forward to the rendezvous with the station on Sunday, and with that we’ll have Orbital joining SpaceX as one of our providers,” NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot said.

SpaceX has so far made two of its 12 scheduled flights to the ISS under a $1.6 billion contract.

A group of Uber drivers in New Zealand won a landmark case Tuesday against the ride-hail company which will force Uber to treat them as employees, rather than independent contractors.

New Zealand’s employment court decision only applies to four drivers who were part of a class action lawsuit filed last July, but the ruling may have wider implications for drivers across the country keen on qualifying for worker rights and protections.

The move in New Zealand comes just a couple of weeks after the U.S. Department of Labor proposed widespread changes to how gig workers should be classified. Specifically, the proposed ruling seeks to classify gig workers as employees if they are economically dependent on the company for which they work.

The formal decision in New Zealand was made in respect to the individual drivers in the case. The court doesn’t have jurisdiction to make broader declarations of employment status for all Uber drivers, according to chief employment court judge Christina Inglis. That means all other Uber drivers don’t immediately become employees; however, Inglis did say the decision “may well have broader impact” because of the “apparent uniformity in the way in which the companies operate, and the framework under which drivers are engaged.”

In the ruling, the Employment Court said that even though a worker’s contract might define them as an independent contractor, that definition depends more on the “substance of the relationship and how it operated in practice.”

“The Court accepted that some of the usual indicators of a traditional employment relationship were missing,” reads the ruling. “However, it was found that significant control was exerted on drivers in other ways, including via incentive schemes that reward consistency and quality and withdrawal of rewards for breaches of Uber’s Guidelines or for slips in quality levels, measured by user ratings.”

The court found that Uber had sole discretion to control prices, service requirements, guidelines, terms and conditions, marketing, relationships with riders and more.

“Uber was able to exercise significant control because of the subordinate position each of the plaintiff drivers was in and which its operating model was designed to facilitate and did facilitate,” according to the ruling.

First Union is now accepting Uber drivers to join as members for a discounted fee of $3.05 per week and would move to initiate collective bargaining. The union says Uber drivers may be owed backpay for lost wages, holiday pay and other entitlements.

“This is a landmark legal decision not just for Aotearoa but also internationally,” said Anita Rosentreter, First Union strategic project coordinator, in a statement. 

I cannot feasibly write a new post on TechCrunch dot com every time a new Pokémon is announced. I did skip over Bellibolt, the electric frog Pokémon that generates power from its big belly. But you know what’s even better than the partner Pokémon of a VTuber gym leader? Greavard. So here we are, writing a post to tell you about this haunting, good boy. I promise, any editor who is reading this, I did not spend more than twenty minutes on this important update in technology news.

Coming to “Pokémon Scarlet and Violet,” Greavard is like a cross between a Litwick (the candle Pokémon that debuted in “Pokémon Black and White”) and a bearded collie, as one Twitter user delightfully illustrated for us here:

In other words, Greavard is a ghost dog. In other other words, according to the Pokémon Company, Greavard is a “lovable subsurface lurker.” That’s either a really great or really terrible Tinder bio, and I can’t decide which, so don’t blame me if you scare off your future wife.

Why “subsurface”? According to the video, it looks like Greavard appears in the wild like a little candle on the ground, submerging its body beneath the surface — maybe the name “Greavard” is supposed to combine “graveyard” and “grief,” and this ghost dog is trying to reunite with a new owner to shower with love? Let’s not dwell on that for too long. But when you approach the shining candle, Greavard will jump out of the ground while “letting out a spooky cry that would startle most unsuspecting people — though it doesn’t appear to do this with ill intent,” the Pokémon Company says.

“Greavard has such a friendly and affectionate personality that paying it even the slightest bit of attention will make it so overjoyed that it will follow Trainers wherever they go. Of all the Pokémon residing in the Paldea region, it is known to be especially easy to befriend,” the press release reads.

But of course, because Pokédex entries are haunting and horrifying, this ghost dog has some pretty dark undertones.

“Greavard will slowly and inadvertently absorb the life-force of those around it, so it’s best not to play with it too much. What’s more, it also has powerful jaws that can shatter bones. A single bite from Greavard can be grievous—so Trainers are advised to approach it with caution,” it says.

I don’t know what to make of that, but I’m definitely catching a Greavard who will become best friends with my Lechonk. I think he’s just a good boy who needs a belly rub in the afterlife. He cannot hurt me.

“Pokémon Scarlet & Violet” will be released for the Nintendo Switch on November 18. We played a sneak preview of the game and wrote about it here.