fortune--2020-05-12--Review: How great are Apple’s new keyboards?

Want to get your stimulus check ASAP ?
Wednesday is the deadline to give the IRS your direct deposit info

About 18 months ago, I had the good fortune to attend Apple’s new product event in New York City to see first hand the updated MacBook Air laptop and iPad Pro tablet with its keyboard cover. Both devices were fantastic in nearly every respect but had a critical, unavoidable flaw: the keyboards were awful. I even titled my review “Typing in Hell.”
This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are no Apple events to attend, but that hasn’t stopped the company from releasing new products. Lately, that’s included an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro unveiled on May 4 and an iPad Pro with a brand new keyboard attachment, which debuted in March. And I’m glad to report that the keyboards on the newest Apple devices are great. Typing in hell has become typing in heaven.
The essential problem with the old keyboards was that they were too thin to allow a satisfying amount of travel when you pressed down on each key. On Apple laptops, that resulted in a brittle and unpleasant typing experience, not to mention serious reliability problems from dust or crumbs getting under the keys and rendering them completely useless. On the iPad Pro’s Smart Keyboard Folio, the keys also had little travel and too much resistance pushing back each time you hit a key.
That’s all changed on the new models.
Review of the MacBook Pro
On the MacBook Pro, the new keyboard uses an older mechanism under each key known as a scissor switch to allow a satisfying amount of travel downwards with each press. Apple first introduced this revision last fall on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, added it to the MacBook Air in March, and now offers it across its entire laptop line up. Typing on a brand new 13-inch MacBook Pro, I had no problems typing accurately, feeling each keystroke register on the keyboard, and hearing a satisfying click.
Otherwise, the newest Apple laptop has few improvements from earlier models. The screen is the same. The limited selection of ports (hope you like USB-C) is the same. And the processor options range from the same aging Intel chips available several years ago to some of Intel’s newest chips for laptops that aren’t actually much faster except for graphics in video games.
But the lack of changes shouldn’t obscure the fact that now, with the improved keyboard, the MacBook Pro is one of the best laptops you can buy.
Review of the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard
On the iPad side, the keyboard changes are dramatic and go beyond just the hardware. The new Magic Keyboard attachment acts sort of like the older keyboard covers Apple sold, which folded around the device to provide protection from scratches while in transit. But the new keyboard device does much more—it’s almost a docking station for the iPad, as well.
The iPad Pro attaches by magnets and stays securely in the Magic Keyboard. Thanks to Apple’s proprietary smart connector, the iPad provides power to the keyboard for back lighting the keys and does away with the need to connect the two devices via Bluetooth.
Once inside the Magic Keyboard, the iPad Pro can be positioned to sit on a table or in your lap and bend to a variety of comfortable viewing angles. The Magic Keyboard is much heavier and more substantial than any other tablet keyboard attachment I’ve tried, which helps it remain stable even when balanced on your lap. The keyboard also has a convenient pass-through USB-C port in its base that can be used to recharge the iPad.
The typing experience is just about as good as on the new Apple laptop keyboard. Keys depress nicely, offering a satisfying click.
There’s also a trackpad, a first for the iPad line. Apple rewrote the software on the iPad recently to support the use of mice and trackpads, and that makes the Magic Keyboard even more useful. In apps that support the new feature, using the trackpad puts a light grey cursor on the iPad screen that helpfully changes shape depending on what it is hovering over. Move the cursor over a line of text, and it turns into a familiar I-bar shape. Slide it over an app’s button controls, and it takes on the shape of the button. All in all, the trackpad is super useful for keeping your hands on the keyboard while typing instead of having to reach up and tap the screen occasionally.
That’s not to say that the Magic Keyboard doesn’t have few quirks and omissions, particularly in the smaller model for the 11-inch iPad Pro. Neither that size or the keyboard for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro has a row of useful function keys above the numbers row, so there’s no shortcut key for adjusting the volume or the screen brightness, for instance. Given the angle of the iPad Pro in the keyboard case, there probably wasn’t room to squeeze in such a row, but it’s definitely missed every time I want to mute the volume in a hurry.
And on the smaller keyboard model, there are some odd key size decisions. The return and shift keys are somewhat undersized, and the dash and tilde are half-sized. Weirdest of all, while the left bracket key is the same size as all the letter keys, the right bracket key is half-sized. It took a few hours to get used to the smaller keys, and I’d probably have preferred some other solution for the 11-inch keyboard that made all of the keys a bit smaller.
Then there is the question of value. Apple’s iPad Pro line is a lot more expensive than its basic iPads, starting at $800 instead of $329. The new Magic Keyboard costs $300 for an 11-inch iPad Pro and $350 for the 12.9-inch model, about double the cost of Apple’s basic Smart Keyboard for regular iPads. Given the usefulness, quality and flexibility, I’d say it’s well worth the price.
And all Apple customers should probably give thanks that the era of keyboards from hell is now finally over.


fortune--2020-05-12--4 takeaways from the House Democrats’ new $3 trillion stimulus bill

Congressional Democrats unveiled their proposal for the next round of coronavirus stimulus funding in a $3 trillion 1,816-paged plan called the HEROES Act on Tuesday afternoon.
“This is a moment when many millions of our fellow Americans are in deep suffering,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a press conference shortly after the bill was released. “It is imperative that we address the needs of the American people with clarity on how we proceed that is why today House Democrats are introducing the Heroes Act.”
The bill rests on three pillars, Pelosi said: Making sure the economy is able to reopen safely, honoring heroes, and putting “much-needed” money into the pockets of Americans.
House and Senate Republicans along with the White House oppose the bill, claiming that it comes too soon after the CARES Act, a similar stimulus bill which was signed into law in March. On a call with Republican Senators this week, Senate leader Mitch McConnell indicated that he was wary of passing any new bills ahead of late May.
House Republican whip Steve Scalise responded to the Democratic bill in a tweet calling it a “partisan spending bill full of liberal wish list items that [Pelosi] wrote completely in secret.” He referred to the plan as a “non-starter.”
The plan would bolster state and local economies with $500 billion specifically for states, $375 billion for local governments, $20 billion for tribal communities that have been hard hit by COVID-19, and another $20 billion for territories like Puerto Rico and Guam. The bill also includes another $1,200 in direct aid to individual Americans and another $200 billion in hazard pay for essential workers. The $600 per week federal unemployment insurance would be extended to January 2021, and $175 billion would be given out in rent, mortgage, and utility relief.
It would also make extensive changes to assist testing and tracking policies related to COVID-19 and to aid Americans who have lost their jobs and health insurance in the midst of the pandemic through shifts in major public and private health programs such as Medicaid, Obamacare, and COBRA.
Some of the more noteworthy provisions are below.
Relief for the Postal Service
House Democrats granted the United States Postal Service $25 billion in funding to be used to replace “revenue foregone due to coronavirus” until September 2022. The only requirements for the funding are that the postal service prioritize the purchase of personal protective equipment and safety of postal workers.
The Postal Service experienced a 30% drop in mail this April due to COVID-19, said postmaster general Megan Brennan. She predicted that without Congressional intervention, USPS would experience a revenue loss of $13 billion by the end of their fiscal year on October 1st solely because of the pandemic. That’s on top of the $9 billion the USPS was already losing each year in good economic times. Without a cash infusion, postal advocates predicted that the service would not be able to function past the end of summer.
Previous bills had given the Postal Service the option to loan money from the Treasury Department under the Trump administration’s terms, but this would be a relief fund.
The United States Postal Service is the only mail carrier required to deliver to every address in the country at a reasonable rate and will be vital to increased vote-by-mail operations this November.
An expansion for SNAP
In their bill, Democrats would expand the maximum amount benefits available through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, sometimes referred to as food stamps, by 15%, which is about the same increase seen in 2009’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. They would bolster the program with an additional $10 billion to help cover the costs of increased demand.
The USDA announced that last month benefits from SNAP had increased by 40% due to the more than 20 million newly unemployed Americans. “These are unprecedented times for American families who are facing joblessness and hunger,” Agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement.
Increasing SNAP benefits are thought to be one of the most effective ways to bring families out of poverty. In 2009, Congress increased minimum SNAP benefits by 14%, and research found that every dollar increase in SNAP generated about $1.74 in economic activity. A United States Department of Agriculture report found that an increase in SNAP benefits also correlated directly to a decrease in unemployment.
Election assistance and preparedness
A presidential and federal election in the midst of a global pandemic is not an easy or cheap event to prepare for, and states have expressed apprehension and how underfunded and underprepared their systems are.
While the bill does put some requirements in place for receiving funds—states must report on how they spent them within 30 days and allocate the money to local precincts—it does not require them to create vote-by-mail systems. Instead, the provision allows states to increase access to PPE for poll workers and to expand absentee ballots and vote-by-mail initiatives if they wish to.
Notably, the bill does also retroactively removes a 20% match requirement for states on previous election assistance funding. Various secretaries of state expressed hardship meeting those requirements because their own budgets had been decimated by COVID-19, and congressman Joe Neguse (D-CO) filed a bill to remove the requirement.
COVID-19 health care efforts
The House of Representatives’ sprawling new stimulus proposal covers a number of complex and intertwined public health and insurance reform goals. It spans the gamut from funding COVID-19 testing and tracking efforts to major (if short-term) changes to the way that health insurance works as tens of millions of Americans lose their jobs.
COVID-19 tracking and testing
The $3 trillion package allocates an addition $75 billion for coronavirus testing and helping locales trace the people who may have had close contact with those who have tested positive for an active infection. Testing—whether for active infections or for people who have developed antibodies after recovering from a COVID-19 case—are critical to reopening the economy, as multiple experts have told Fortune.
Depending on how that money is dispersed should the bill pass, it could be critical to scaling up antibody testing which can give us a greater grasp on who is vulnerable and who isn’t among the workforce.
Obamacare, Medicaid, and COBRA
The stimulus proposal would make significant changes to a host of insurance programs which include private insurers, publicly funded plans for low-income Americans, and those who have lost their jobs.
It would enhance the special enrollment period and subsidies under the individual insurance Affordable Care Act marketplaces for those who have lost their employer-sponsored insurance. That would be a significant change given the tens of millions of Americans losing jobs in an economic calamity we haven’t seen since the Great Depression.
The bill would also force the federal government to pay a higher share of money for Medicaid beneficiaries.
Medicaid is a program that largely serves the poor and disabled, and it’s a joint public program between the federal government and individual states. The House bill would “extend the amount and duration of the federal match rate for Medicaid from 6.2 percentage points to 14 percentage points from July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021,” as the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KFF) Robin Rudowitz explained on Twitter Tuesday. That means skittish health care providers feeling a cash crunch from an influx of newly unemployed Americans without adequate health insurance may be more willing to see patients who are struggling financially.
Finally, there’s COBRA, the private insurance option for people who have been laid off from their jobs. COBRA is infamous for being extremely expensive. Recipients remain on their existing employer-provided private plans for a limited period of time but may be charged far more in monthly premiums. Under the House bill, there would be a 100% COBRA subsidy for those who have lost their jobs for a period of time.


fortune--2020-05-12--Want to get your stimulus check ASAP? Wednesday is the deadline to give the IRS your direct deposit

Want to get your stimulus check ASAP? Wednesday is the deadline to give the IRS your direct deposit info

Supreme Court appears likely to reject Trump ’ s claim he ’ s immune from criminal investigation

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If you’d like to receive your stimulus check directly through your bank account—rather than having to wait for a paper check to arrive in the mail—time is quickly running out.
For many taxpayers, the deadline to provide the federal government with your direct deposit banking information is Wednesday May 13th at noon ET, according to the IRS. The federal agency has urged people to provide their information through its “Get My Payment” portal by that time; otherwise, they’ll potentially have to wait weeks to receive a check in the mail.
The IRS has already disbursed more than $200 billion in “economic impact payments,” as they’re known, to roughly 130 million Americans in a matter of four weeks since the first payments began going out in mid-April.
Still, tens of millions of Americans have yet to receive their stimulus payments, and the IRS says that it will significantly ramp up the number of paper checks it sends out to Americans after Wednesday. Those checks will begin arriving through late May and into June, according to the agency.
“Time is running out for a chance to get these payments several weeks earlier through direct deposit,” IRS commissioner Chuck Rettig said in a statement.
Of course, actually logging into the “Get My Payment” portal to provide one’s direct deposit information has proven easier said than done, given the technical difficulties encountered by many who have tried to access the site.
While the government claims that it has continued to improve the portal, many users are still experiencing difficulties—though some have found one easy solution, in the form of simply entering their home address in all capital letters.
More personal finance coverage from Fortune:
—What to do if you can’t pay your bills this month
—Stimulus checks are depositing: How people are spending the money
—Stuck in the unemployment benefit backlog? What you should know
—What you should know about mortgage forbearance and skipping payments
—Furlough vs. layoff? What to know about your rights and benefits
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19


fortune--2020-05-12--The coronavirus crisis has accelerated the shift to stakeholder capitalism

If there is any positive consequence resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s the acceleration of the shift to stakeholder capitalism away from companies’ singular emphasis on shareholders.
Ever since Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman declared in 1970 that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, a debate has raged between advocates of shareholder primacy and stakeholder capitalism.
Four decades later, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer provided the vehicle for integrating stakeholders in their 2011 Harvard Business Review article, “Creating Shared Value.” By addressing societal needs, they wrote, companies could expand their markets in ways that benefit society and shareholders simultaneously while creating value for their customers, employees, their communities, and ultimately, their investors.
Recognizing the obligations companies have to all stakeholders, in 2019, the Business Roundtable, composed of America’s leading companies, rewrote its purpose statement around meeting the needs of all stakeholders, dropping its prior purpose of shareholder primacy.
Now the economic harm caused by the pandemic has shifted the pendulum further toward the multi-stakeholder model, as the importance of employees and customers are brought into sharper focus.
The crisis is causing companies to find creative new ways to address societal needs through their mainstream businesses. CEOs are rapidly adapting to the new normal that will define the future economy, giving top priority to the safety and wellbeing of employees and customers. While 2020 profitability is taking a back seat to health concerns, companies are shoring up their balance sheets to weather the storm and compete for the long term.
To thrive competitively and financially in 2021 and beyond, CEOs are adopting creative strategies with new business models to meet their customers’ rapidly changing needs, as the pandemic enables them to accelerate years of changes into the next few months. Nowhere is this more apparent than in digital transformation as the primary way companies engage with customers and operate their businesses. Those on the leading edge of digital—like Amazon, Walmart, and Microsoft—are thriving, while companies that lagged—like J.C. Penney, Sears, and J. Crew—struggle to survive.
Here’s how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting each stakeholder group:
Employees
The coronavirus crisis has reinforced the importance of employees working on the frontlines of health care, retail, food, and medical equipment and delivery services—many of whom are risking their lives. Employee safety has become paramount and the gating factor to reopening workplaces. In March, Walmart recognized the importance of frontline workers in combating COVID-19 when it announced over $365 million in bonuses for full-time and part-time hourly employees. Shortly thereafter, Target announced $300 million in special payments to its workers.
As companies restart, they will be restructuring their organizations to reduce middle managers, travel budgets, and consultants, while simultaneously upgrading training, compensation, and benefits for frontline employees. As routine jobs are automated, there will be fewer but better trained workers. Meanwhile, many employees working from home are finding they can be more productive working on their own schedules and avoiding long commutes.
Customers
When companies reopen, will they be greeted by customers ready to purchase their products and services? The devastating impact of unemployment, furloughs, and pay cuts has reinforced the need for savings, cash reserves, and reduced discretionary spending. Instead of buying new homes and automobiles, many consumers are opting to keep their vehicles longer and live in rental apartments. Health and safety concerns further accelerate the shift to shopping online, at store pickup, and home delivery of everything from groceries to personal computers.
By the time a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available, these new habits will become routine consumer behavior—and unlikely to revert. Companies that meet these new demands in an efficient, safe manner will be the winners. Service concepts will change as well, with service delivered remotely using electronic tools and teleservice. CEO Corie Barry has reengineered Best Buy’s online and in-store experience with private appointments and curbside pickups, for instance.
Suppliers
Supply chain shortages of critical parts during the pandemic have hampered manufacturing of critical products like masks and pharmaceuticals, largely due to long supply lines for raw materials from India and China for raw materials. These problems will cause companies to rebalance supply chains in multiple geographies, even at higher costs, and establish preferred supplier agreements rather than choosing only the lowest cost suppliers.
Communities
The COVID-19 pandemic has restored the importance of one’s local community, but also has stripped employees of in-person communities at work. In response, many companies are engaging employees through online activities, such as virtual happy hours. Other forms of community have also come to the forefront. Target shared its SAFE Retail Toolkit, a playbook for reopening, to help other retailers open safely—fostering a sense of community among employers. Amazon recently announced plans to invest more than $4 billion in its COVID-19 response, which included improving the safety of its workers and serving its customers more effectively.
Shareholders
Companies that adapt rapidly to the new normal will be the winners in the marketplace, enabling them to create greater value for investors. Paradoxically, the greatest shareholder value creators are not those that obsess over maximizing shareholder value. Rather, they are companies that focus on long-term strategies to create superior value for their customers with highly motivated, well-compensated employees.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused CEOs to recognize that stakeholder capitalism is the only way to create sustainable shareholder value, adapt their business models to meet customers’ emerging needs, inspire employees, partner with suppliers, and build communities.
Bill George is senior fellow at Harvard Business School and former chair and CEO of Medtronic. He is the author of Discover Your True North.


fortune--2020-05-12--Bias against Asian Americans continues to rise

This is the web version of raceAhead, Fortune’s daily newsletter on race, culture, and inclusive leadership. To get it delivered daily to your inbox, sign up here.
At a time when we should be highlighting overlooked contributions of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, reports of bias and hate crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise, unabated.
And politics-as-usual appear to be making things worse.
Anti-China sentiment in political speech—everything from a sneering President Donald Trump addressing an Asian-American reporter to a worrisome ad from the Biden campaign—has further put the community on edge. “There’s a clear link between the rhetoric that’s being used and the increased harm to our community,” John Yang, president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC tells The Intercept. “We are equally concerned about both parties. We are concerned that there will be a race to the bottom.”
And federal agencies have been uncharacteristically silent on the issue, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity and NBC News.
“Neither the Justice Department nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have announced efforts to prevent the public targeting of Asians, which ranges from bias incidents to hate crimes,” they say. “Both agencies were quick to act in similar situations: the CDC during the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak and the Justice Department after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”
Earlier this month, 16 Democratic senators—including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Mazie K. Hirono of Hawaii, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, and Cory Booker of New Jersey—sent a joint letter to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, asking them to immediately develop and implement a plan to address the increase in hate crimes.
“There are more than 20 million Americans of Asian descent, and 2 million AAPI individuals are working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, as health care workers, law enforcement agents, first responders, and other essential service providers,” the letter says. “It is critical that the Civil Rights Division ensure that the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans are protected during this pandemic.”
The business community has begun to address the issue, however.
Ascend, a non-profit Pan-Asian organization for business professionals in North America, along with 10 other organizations—including Catalyst, The Conference Board, National Congress of American Indians, National Organization on Disability, and Out & Equal—have signed off on #AscendTogether, a five-point plan to denounce bias and support members of the AAPI community, along with other demographics who are disproportionately affected by the coronavirus.
“Discrimination targeted at Pan-Asians in forms of shunning, harassment, and assaults impedes our ability to stem the spread of the pandemic. About 20% of U.S. health care workers are immigrants; 17% of doctors in the U.S. are of Asian descent, while people of all backgrounds work to save lives on the frontline,” they write. “Discriminatory threats against any first responders also put at risk the patients they serve and delay finding a cure for the disease. Pan-Asians and our diverse communities are an integral part of the solutions to this global crisis.”
Some 100 corporate stalwarts have signed on as well, including Accenture, American Express, Bank of America, IBM, Intel, P&G, and Walmart.
For those keeping track, the ADL, the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), and the Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA). Have been documenting and reporting instances of harassment and discrimination.
What have you been doing to help AAPI and other employees feel safe, and to curb potential hate speech? Let us know how you’re handling these tough conversations and we’ll amplify.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
.
On point
A new documentary focuses on the history of Asian Americans People of AAPI descent have been living in the U.S. for some 150 years, yet have struggled to have their experiences and contributions documented. “Asian Americans,” a new five-part series created by PBS and local broadcasting station WETA, aims to remedy this. “I think Asian Americans have been seen as the outsiders, sort of tangential to American culture, to American history,” says Renee Tajima-Peña, a filmmaker, professor, and showrunner for the series. The series takes on broad events in chronological order—Chinese Exclusion Act, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, the role of Filipinos in the farmworker movement—and individual stories of note, like that of Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh man who fought for U.S. citizenship in a Supreme Court case.
NBC News
Tribal nations in turmoil as casino revenues plunge and infection spreads The shutdown of some 500 tribally-owned casinos is roiling tribal economies as COVID-19 disease devastates local Native American communities, many of which are in rural areas without clean water or Internet. One shuttered casino is now a quarantine site in Wyoming; the Navajo Nation has a higher death rate than most U.S. states with no relief in sight. Some two-thirds of tribal employees are now out of work in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula tribal community. “Life and death,” their tribal chairman, Bryan Newland, told the New York Times. “We’re just going to write off 2020. There’s no sense in trying to work under the delusion that we’ll be able to claw back to normal life this year.”
New York Times
South Dakota’s governor in a stand-off with tribal nations At issue are the public health checkpoints placed on the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribal lands; Governor Kristi Noem wants them removed, and tribal authorities are not budging. Noem claims that the checkpoints are bottlenecks to essential travel, tribal authorities say they will reduce infection at a critical time. Noem has threatened legal action. I’ve linked to the West River Eagle which serves the Eagle Butte area of South Dakota—click around a bit, their coverage is thorough and eye-opening. (Note: raceAhead subscribed.)
West River Eagle
Rest in Wonder: Paul Vasquez, the man from the double rainbow viral video, has died Turns out, he was just as sweet and awestruck in person, though the world knew him as the man overcome with delight at the sight of a double rainbow over Yosemite Park. It was 2010, and the video he posted made him one of the first viral video stars. He died while seeking care in a California emergency room; cause is unknown, but he’d posted over the weekend that he’d fallen ill with COVID-19-like symptoms though he tested negative for the disease. His friends called him “Bear” or “Yosemite Bear.”
Buzzfeed News
Coronavirus in the community
On background
Paging Dr. Stress Dr. Bruce Rabin, the now retired director of immunopathology from the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, has long been known as “Dr. Stress” for his lifelong dedication to using science to help people manage the damage stress can do to their health and wellbeing. The man is beloved. “For years he has spent his own time and dime helping city teachers, firefighters, students, doctors, and journalists, among many others, to adopt certain mental and physical practices to keep predatory stress at bay, as a tamer does tigers,” writes David Templeton in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (Templeton also refers to Rabin as a “prophet of peacefulness.” Awww.) More on Dr. Rabin below, but I’ve got even better news: Eight of Dr. Rabin’s lectures—PowerPoint with audio—can be found for free here. The series helps illuminate physical mechanisms of stress and offers ways to reduce stress-related discomfort, illness, and disease.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Why did we need to see Ahmaud Arbery die? Sarah Sentilles revisits a fundamental question of the modern age: Whose death do we get to see and why? In Arbery’s case, seeing the video triggered an investigation, but the “debate” about what was on it also reinforces some deadly racist ideas. Sentilles, an author who has been studying violent imagery for some 15 years, deftly weaves in the coverage of the Ebola outbreak, in which images of dead Black bodies were common. In the middle of an arguably worse pandemic and which has impacted white populations, the dead are granted a privileged form of privacy, she says. “When the most visible dead are Black and Brown people killed by police in the United States or killed by war and disease in other countries, then those violent images—even when they help generate outrage that leads to arrests—become part of the armature of white supremacy, too.”
Vox
An arranged marriage thrives in quarantine Anu Prabhakar has written a sweetly poignant essay that pulls back the curtain on her already stable marriage, arranged some nine years ago. Six years in, they had a son. All normal, all fine. But while convening with other new mothers, she began to wonder if the pleasant routine that families fall into was, well, all there was to it. “Do all long marriages, after a point, revolve around everything except the actual marriage itself?” she asks. Then, deep into the day-to-dayness of their lives, the pair suddenly found themselves locked in together, and found that they hadn’t drifted apart, but they were drifting together. Delightful.
Arre
What losing Len Bias really meant The promising young athlete died of a cocaine overdose just two days after he was drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1986. It was a shocker at the time, and the grief among fans and friends was palpable. But, posits writer Chuck Modiano, his death also inspired the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which “helped usher in ‘The New Jim Crow’ of mass incarceration in America,” and disproportionately filled American prisons with Black people caught up in harsh mandatory minimum sentencing and an over-emphasis on crack versus powder cocaine. Modiano’s history of drug war efforts leaves no person or party unscathed.
New York Daily News
Today's mood board


fortune--2020-05-12--Facebook makes strides using A.I. to automatically find hate speech and COVID-19 misinformation

Facebook says it’s getting better at automatically detecting and removing hate speech and misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.
It has pioneered a number of artificial intelligence techniques to help it police content across its social networks, Facebook said Tuesday in a series of blog posts.
The details about the technology Facebook is using came on the same day the company released its latest quarterly update on its efforts to combat hate speech, child pornography, fake accounts, political misinformation, terrorist propaganda, and other violations of its community standards. The report showed the company was combating a big surge in hate speech and COVID-19 related misinformation since the start of the year.
Among the new A.I. systems Facebook highlighted on Tuesday are systems that better understand the meaning of language and the context in which it is used, as well as nascent systems that combine image and language processing in order to detect harmful memes.
As well as helping to combat misinformation related to COVID-19, Facebook has also turned to new A.I. algorithms to police its new policy banning ads selling face masks, hand sanitizer, and other items that seek to exploit the pandemic for profit.
The company put warning labels on 50 million posts in April for possible misinformation around COVID-19, the company said in a blog. It also said that since the beginning of March it has removed 2.5 million pieces of content that violated rules about selling personal protective equipment or coronavirus test kits.
Facebook said that thanks to the new techniques, 88.8% of the hate speech the social network took down in the past quarter was detected automatically before someone saw and flagged the offensive material for review by the company’s human reviewers. This is up from about 80% in the previous quarter.
But the company said that the total amount of hate speech it’s finding continues to rise—9.6 million pieces of content were removed in the first three months of 2020, 3.9 million more than in the previous three months.
Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, said the increase was due to the company getting better at finding hateful content, not a surge in hate speech itself. “I think this is clearly attributable to technological advances,” he said on a call with reporters ahead of the release of the report.
In particular, Facebook has built on advances in very large language learning algorithms that have only been developed in the past three years. These models work by building a statistical picture of how the words in posted content relate to the other words that come both before and after it. Facebook has developed a system called XLM-R, trained on two terrabytes of data, or about the equivalent of all the words in half a million 300-page books. It learns the statistical map of all of those words across multiple languages at once. The idea is that conceptual commonalities between hate speech in any language will mean the statistical maps of hate speech will look similar across every language even if the words themselves are completely different.
Facebook is at pains to show it is making good at CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s repeated promises that machine learning and A.I. will enable the company to combat the spread of hate speech, terrorist propaganda, and political misinformation across its platforms—problems that have put Facebook in the crosshairs of regulators globally and turned many one-time fans against the company in the past four years.
“We are not naive,” Schroepfer said. “A.I. is not the solution to every single problem and we believe that humans will be in the loop for the foreseeable future.”
Much of the tech Facebook highlighted is designed to make the job of its human content moderators and associated fact-checking organizations easier and less repetitive.
That is especially important at a time when social distancing measures instituted by the company as well as by various countries have meant that the centers where many of its human content moderators work have had to close, and the reviewers, many of whom are contractors, have been sent home. In some cases, Schroepfer said, the company has found ways for these people to continue their work from home, although that has not been possible in all cases.
“We want people making the final decisions, especially when the situation is nuanced,” Schroepfer said. “But we want to give people we work with every day power tools.” For instance, he said, if a human reviewer decided that a whole class of images constituted misinformation, Facebook should be able to automatically apply that label to similar content across both Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram without the human reviewers having to find and manually remove all of it.
One way people try to evade Facebook’s content blacklists is by making small modifications to blocked content—altering some pixels in an image or using a photo filter, for instance—and then trying to upload it again and hope it sneaks past Facebook’s algorithms. To battle these tactics, the company has developed a new A.I. system, called SimSearchNet, trained to find pieces of nearly identical content.
Another computer vision system the company has deployed to enforce its new COVID-19 ad policy works by identifying the objects present in an image, not simply forming a statistical map of all of the pixels it contains. This way the algorithm should be able to determine that the image has a face mask in it, even if that face mask is rotated at a funny angle or shown against a background designed to make it harder for machine learning software to recognize it, Schroepfer said.
Finally, the company said it was also working on “multimodal” machine learning systems—ones that can simultaneously analyze text and imagery, and in the future, possibly video and sound too—to combat the spread of hateful memes.
To that end, the company has created a new dataset consisting of 10,000 memes that were determined to be part of hate speech campaigns and it is making it freely available for researchers to use to build A.I. systems capable of successfully detecting them. The company is creating a competition with a $100,000 prize pool to find the best hateful meme detection software, with the condition that in order to enter the contest, researchers must commit to open-sourcing their algorithms.
As a benchmark, Facebook’s A.I. researchers created several systems of their own and trained them on this dataset. But the company’s results so far indicate how difficult the challenge is: Facebook’s best hateful meme detector, which was pre-trained on very large dataset of both text and images simultaneously, was only 63% accurate. Human reviewers, by contrast, were about 85% accurate and missed less than 20% of the memes it should have caught.
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—Remote work, online grocery shopping, cord cutting: What coronavirus trends will stick
—No buses, no problem. Some cities provide subsidized Uber rides amid pandemic
—How to choose a video chat app? Grade it on privacy
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: Zoom’s ups and downs since the coronavirus crisis
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-05-12--Top mall developer tells retailers withholding rent to pay up

Things are getting testier between the largest mall developer and its struggling tenants.
Simon Property Group, the operator of many top caliber U.S. malls, such as Roosevelt Field on Long Island, N.Y. and Stanford Mall in Palo Alto, Calif., is contending with many tenants like Gap, Cheesecake Factory, and Urban Outfitters declining to pay rent for April. Some are holding out for May, too, as stores have been largely closed across the country because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
But David Simon, the son of the company’s co-founder, told Wall Street analysts on Monday night he expects tenants to honor their contracts, even as the companies have taken dramatic steps to preserve cash during mass store closings: furloughing staff, drawing down credit, and cutting dividends.
“We have a lease, and they have to pay,” Simon said.
He declined to say how many tenants have declined to pay. Rival mall developer Macerich on Monday said it has so far collected 26% of rents billed for April and 18% for May. Brookfield was at 20% for April, suggesting collections have been paltry for Simon, too.
Still, Simon’s shares rose 10% after the company said it would pay its dividend, that dozens of its more than 100 malls had already reopened as some states ease their lockdowns, and that by next week, half of its retail space would be open to the public. (Simon also operates several dozen outlet centers.)
For now though, Simon faces tough negotiations with many retailers grappling with the vaporization of sales in April and are anticipating a slow return when they do reopen stores. Last week, Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette told Fortune sales might be 20% of normal levels in their first week after reopening, coming back gradually. Gap Inc CEO Sonia Syngal wouldn’t say if her company, which pays $115 million in monthly rent for its North American stores, had resumed paying in May, but did allow that she sees the opportunity to rethink (code for permanently close) the size of the Gap and Banana Republic fleets.
Either way, landlords won’t escape retail’s pain, and Simon should brace for more stores withholding rent payments.
“It seems unrealistic to believe these tenants will be able to pay deferred rent,” GreenStreet Advisors wrote in an analyst note. “Despite the aforementioned rhetoric, we continue to believe most rent not collected on time will turn into rent abatement, not deferral.” What’s more, the research firm warned, Simon and other developers should brace for a downward re-setting of rent rates.
Adding to the pain: the closing of many anchor department stores. Macy’s was already planning to close 125 stores, and the COVID-19 crisis could lead it to close more. Last week, Nordstrom said it was closing 16 of its full line department stores, the first large-scale closure program in its history, and Neiman Marcus filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, raising the likelihood it will close at least a few stores. J.C. Penney, which has 800 stores, is reportedly looking into seeking Chapter 11 protection too.
Anchor tenants disappearing is painful for mall owners in two ways. They generate a ton of shopper traffic for the mall as a whole, which is why they typically pay a very modest rent. But more worryingly for Simon and its peers, the disappearance of anchors can set off so-called co-tenancy clauses that can allow some tenants to break their lease. Such clauses call for a certain percentage of space in a mall to be occupied or for there to be an anchor tenant, typically a department store or a grocer.
For now, Simon prefers to focus on some green shoots. “For the retailers that are opening, they’re gaining market share. They’re taking advantage of pent-up demand,” Simon said, noting that sales have been better than expected. But with the majority of retailers still dark and many opting for measures that limit store visits, business won’t pick up all that quickly.
Simon suggested that was beside the point. The pressing need, he said, is to get people back in the habit of going to stores, even if the ramp up is gradual, and to see what safety measures work as more centers reopen.
“[Shoppers] want to see more stores open, as do we, but I think it’s a process, and you got to get started and you go from there,” said Simon.


fortune--2020-05-12--Facebook removes 10 million posts for hate speech as tensions rise on the social network

Facebook removed nearly 10 million posts for violating its hate speech policy during the first three months of this year, marking a new quarterly high for such infractions on the social network.
The company said on Tuesday that the increase, a 68% gain from 5.7 million posts during the previous quarter, was due to improvements in its technology for policing the service. Facebook did not address whether increasing hate on the site was a factor. The company’s technology can now scan posts in additional languages and is also better at detecting hate speech in English, the company said.
“It’s allowed us to identify more harm proactively and keep our community safe including now in the face of a global pandemic,” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said during a press call on Tuesday. “That said, I know our systems aren’t perfect and need to improve. Our effectiveness has certainly been impacted by having less human review during COVID-19, and we do unfortunately expect to make more mistakes.”
Facebook bans violent or dehumanizing comments, statements of inferiority, calls for exclusion or segregation, or slurs against any race ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.
Additionally, the company that less than 1% of appeals by users to reinstate posts removed for hate speech were successful within the last quarter. The company said this is partially due to fewer resources being devoted to hate-speech appeals because they have been diverted to policing posts about the coronavirus that violated the company’s policies.
Following the outbreak, Facebook said it had planned to refocus much of its content moderation efforts on posts about the coronavirus. That means other problems like bullying and harassment, which heavily depend on content moderators to police, would get less attention and therefore could become a greater problem. Meanwhile, political tensions continue to rise on the social network as federal and state politicians take different approaches to handling the pandemic. The outbreak also created a rise of anti-Asian sentiment. And coronavirus aside, tensions are continuing to flare as the U.S. nears a contentious presidential election.
“We’re definitely monitoring and continuing to look closely at how the COVID pandemic is impacting these kinds of trends on our platform,” Guy Rosen, vice president of integrity at Facebook, said suggesting the current quarter should reveal more about the pandemic’s impact on hate speech.
Before the first quarter, the highest number of posts that were removed from Facebook for hate speech violations during a three-month period were 7 million in the third quarter of 2019.
In the last quarter, Facebook said it removed about 89% of the hate speech posts before they had been flagged by any users. That’s up from about 80% of posts the company found proactively during the previous quarter as Facebook continues to improve its automated detection.
The report also showed a rise in organized hate, or hate groups. In the first quarter, the company removed 4.7 million such posts, which does not include numbers from the month of March. That total is nearly triple the 1.6 million posts removed in the fourth quarter for a similar reason. Of the posts removed in the first quarter, Facebook said it found 97% of them before users reported them.
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—Remote work, online grocery shopping, cord cutting: What coronavirus trends will stick
—No buses, no problem. Some cities provide subsidized Uber rides amid pandemic
—How to choose a video chat app? Grade it on privacy
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: Zoom’s ups and downs since the coronavirus crisis
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-05-12--What life is like for more than 90,000 cruise workers that have been stuck at sea for two months

Lauren Carrick and fiance Joe Harrison haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. The two dancers on Celebrity Cruises’s Infinity say being held aboard ships for almost two months has left them emotionally drained.
“I cried all day,” said Carrick, 29. “We need to have alcohol to sleep — that’s how bad it is. We’re worried, tense, stressed out. We just want to get home.”
Carrick and Harrison are among the more than 90,000 cruise workers in U.S. waters stranded on ships two months after the coronavirus pandemic began forcing cruise lines to halt operations and repatriate crew. While companies work through a thicket of shifting rules on returning workers to their home countries, recent deaths of crew have shook the industry and underscored concern about mental health.
“It’s a very stressful situation,” said Fabrizio Barcellona, assistant secretary for seafarers at the International Transport Workers’ Federation, which represents local unions. “The prolonged periods they have to stay on board can create a situation of unrest. People can become distressed and that can create flash points.”
Carnival Corp.’s Princess Cruises said Sunday a 39-year-old crew member from the Ukraine was killed after leaping off its Regal Princess in the port of Rotterdam. The ship’s crew was in the process of being repatriated, the company said in an emailed statement.
Another worker was found dead in his cabin on the Carnival Breeze, unrelated to Covid-19, the company said. Carnival, the world’s largest operator, said it was not providing details of the death out of respect for the worker’s family.
Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., the No. 2 line and owner of Celebrity Cruises, said a crew member went overboard from its Jewel of the Seas about two weeks ago.
‘Suicidal’ Messages
Crew members have said the reported deaths have rattled them and dampened morale, said Krista Thomas, a former Norwegian Cruise Line guest manager who’s operating two Facebook pages for stranded crew and their families. In recent days, several workers have told her in direct messages that they are suicidal, she said.
“Many of these people have been isolated in their small cabins for 21 hours a day and they’re breaking down from the loneliness and stress,” said Thomas, who operates the pages from Vancouver, Canada. “Many have been told to pack quickly to leave, and then their charter flights get canceled. Those highs and lows are taking their toll.”
The cruise line operators say government policy changes and travel restrictions have complicated efforts to get crew home. More than 124 cruise ships with 94,600 workers aboard are underway or at anchor in U.S. waters, the U.S. Coast Guard said Monday.
“That one simple question – how do we get you home? – turns out to be incredibly complex to answer,” Michael Bayley, chief executive officer of Royal Caribbean International, wrote in a letter to crew members this month. “Each country has rules and regulations for who can travel home, and how, and when. But in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, those rules have gone in all different directions – and they frequently change without notice.”
About 15 countries won’t allow their citizens to return home at all amid the pandemic, said Bayley.
About 7,100 Filipino crew on 20 ships were anchored in Manila bay as of last week, awaiting government testing and clearance to return home, the Philippine Coast Guard said. Many have been confined to their cabins for at least two weeks, according to crew and some operators. They will be quarantined 14 more days before leaving the vessel, the Coast Guard said in an email.
Royal Caribbean International has said all 25,000 crew members on its ships have completed 14 days of in-room quarantine and are now practicing social distancing. While the company has repatriated about 9,100 seafarers, plans are still being made for the others, who come from 60 different countries, Bayley said in the letter.
Carnival has also cited port closures and travel restrictions as roadblocks to getting crew back on land. The operator repatriated 20,000 workers last month, leaving 52,500 waiting to go home as of Friday, according to Roger Frizzell, a spokesman for Carnival, which employs about 90,000 crew on 105 cruise ships.
CDC Requirements
The business shutdown for many cruise operators began in earnest March 14, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its first-ever no sail order for all cruise ships in U.S. waters.
The order banned passengers from boarding and required lines to come up with plans to contain COVID-19 infections. Since February, more than 30 cruise voyages have been linked to coronavirus outbreaks, according to the CDC website.
Last month, the CDC updated requirements that called for cruise company executives to guarantee that seafarers would be flown home on charter flights and other private transport. Under the rules, crew should not use public airport terminals or transportation to avoid the risk of spreading infections.
Travel restrictions have also meant that in some cases, workers are shuffled from one ship to another before they can set food on land again.
Carrick and Harrison, both from the U.K., were moved to another Celebrity ship, the Reflection, a few days ago. They were told to pack to transfer to yet another ship Monday, but were given a last-minute option to remain on their current ship and then get on a charter flight to the U.K. next week.
They chose the flight and have also made another important decision. After dancing on ships for more than 6 years, this will be their last voyage.
“This whole experience has been a nightmare,” said Carrick. “I can’t even think of coming back to a ship.”


fortune--2020-05-12--The Coronavirus Economy: This custom drapery business is now making masks

Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus and its impact on global business.
The Red Pincushion specialized in bespoke home decor items such as throw pillows, chair cushions, and window drapes since it opened in 2013.
But as COVID-19 broke out over the last few months, the Birmingham, Ala.-based business responded by converting its textile productions to transform old t-shirts into face masks. Thanks to the efforts of a mix of employees and volunteers, equipped with laser cutters to cut large bolts of fabric, the company has produced and shipped more than 79,000 custom masks as of the week ending May 8.
Fortune spoke with owner Christine McLean for a new series, The Coronavirus Economy, to ask about how the outbreak has affected her work and her thoughts on the future and to get a sense of how she has been handling this news, both emotionally and financially.
The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Christine McLean is the owner of The Red Pincushion, a workroom and sewing studio in Birmingham, Alabama. Christine McLean
Fortune: What would you normally be working on this time of year if there weren’t a pandemic going on?
McLean: I spent most of my career in medical software, and then decided to stay home with my kids when they were little. About six years ago, I decided to try and make my own drapery panels after meeting with a decorator and purchasing fabric. I have been a lifelong sewist and had gotten back into it when my kids were little, making Halloween costumes. It turned into a full-time business as an interior design workroom. Because projects are typically six weeks out, I still have workroom projects in that I have been doing at night.
When did you realize that COVID-19 would affect your work life? What adjustments did you make initially?
On March 20, the internet began circulating a lot of noise around cotton face masks facing a PPE shortage of N-95 masks. I decided to try and play around with some patterns and to look into different materials. At that same time, a friend reached out and messaged me about a group that had been started by a woman named Kathy Green that same day with the focus on making face masks for the health care community. I reached out to see if she wanted help, explaining my sewing background. She said yes and asked if I would be an admin. The first few days we were just focused on getting our pattern down and trying to find elastic.
When did you make the decision to start producing masks? What inspired the shift?
The group was initially a grassroots Facebook group that we were simply leading. Within that first week, we set up collection points throughout the city, and we set up a distribution site where organizations could pick up the masks. Some friends were physicians at our local hospitals, and they were driving to my home to come get them because PPE was in short supply. It was really crazy. We quickly figured out that we need to set up a website and that was when we came up with the name “Bham Face Masks.” Within five days, we had 600 people actively sewing and within 10 days, we had already delivered 5,600 masks into the community, and we had 2,100 open requests.
By the third week, we were contacted by the Jefferson County Unified Command. This was a coalition of the Health Department and the Emergency Management Agency (EMA). They asked us if we could produce 10,000 masks for first responders and those most vulnerable like the homeless and nursing homes.
We knew we needed to get into a production mode to make this work. The first step was to figure out how to cut these quickly as cutting took a long time. There was a local laser cutter that reached out. We learned that normal quilting cotton that you get from a fabric store would not easily go through his machine; instead it needed to be on a roll. We reached out to fabric store about an hour away, and they had what we needed.
At the same time, we were starting to source large quantities of elastic and that is when we reached out to our community to see if anyone was interested in being on our production team. Ironing the hems in was the next step we needed to get figured out. At first, we used volunteers, but it quickly became apparent that there were too many inconsistencies. Now, we use a local woman’s shelter where 200 women reside, and this week they ironed over 5,000 pieces in a few days.
The Red Pincushion specializes in bespoke home decor items such as pillows, cushions, and draperies. Christine McLean
Was it difficult to switch your production chain from making drapes to making masks? Are the masks medical-grade? How are the masks assembled, and many have you produced so far?
This is a whole separate business that we have created. These are cotton two-ply masks with a pocket for a filter. Currently, our process involves getting the fabric from Winfield, Ala. utilizing one of our volunteer drives who takes it to the laser cutter. From the laser cutter, we take it to the Lovelady Center [a nonprofit focused on empowering women through faith-based initiatives], where it is ironed. The buckets are then paired with thread, elastic, or ties, and the sewists pick them up once a week. We just completed our first round of production for the county in two weeks sewing over 6,000 masks. On the other side of our mask making, sewn purely by volunteers, we have delivered over 60,000.
The masks are not made in my workroom. I am just managing this mask making venture which takes up most of the day, and I spend most evening catching up on work orders.
What are your day-to-day operations like now? How many paid employees are working on this? How many are volunteers?
Every morning, we look at our request list. For requests 100 or less, we put them out to our Facebook community. A member will claim the work and contact the facility directly and set up deliver. For those larger than 100, we work to fill those from our distribution center. For example, today we are filling orders in the range of 500 to 1,000 for medical clinics that are opening to the public, and they need them to provide to the patients that come into the door.
We have added two additional production teams to increase production to fill all our larger orders. We employ 20 people sewing masks. We also have entered into another initiative with the city called #bhamstrong. It was a response to the unemployment issue many were experiencing. We utilize their employees to cut all of our T-shirts that are donated into T-shirt ties, and we have a team of 10 that will begin sewing for us next week.
Since COVID-19 broke out, a mix of employees and volunteers have produced more than 79,000 custom masks to date. Christine McLean
What are your future plans for the masks program—and your original drapery business—short-term and long-term?
We believe this is going to be a long-term issue. We have created a nonprofit corporation called G.R.I.T. (Grass Roots Initiative Team), and we are filing for our 501-c3. Starting next week, we will be opening our requests up to businesses that are beginning to reopen and will need masks for their employees and patrons. Within the city limits of Birmingham, masks are now mandated to be worn in public.
On the drapery room side, I have begun to receive large orders again, and I have work into July. I will, maybe, be able to expand my operations utilizing some of the incredible seamstresses I have met on this mask making adventure.
On a personal note, how have you been faring amid all this?
I am tired, but hopeful. It has been in incredible journey. All of these people coming together from all parts of our community for one common purpose has been awe-inspiring, at best.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—This famed economist doesn’t think we’re headed for another Great Recession
—South Korea has the most comprehensive coronavirus data. What it’s taught us so far
—10 questions about the 2020 election during the coronavirus pandemic, answered
—6 steps to sustainably flatten the coronavirus curve
—How hackers are exploiting the coronavirus—and how to protect yourself
—Hong Kong launches a surveillance operation to track suspected coronavirus patients
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: The race is on to create a coronavirus antiviral drug and vaccine
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-05-12--Uber bids for Grubhub to create a food-delivery giant

Uber has made an offer to acquire Grubhub, in a move that would build out its food-delivery platform even as it shutters parts of its own service abroad, according to people familiar with the matter.
The companies are in talks about a deal and could reach an agreement as soon as this month, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t public.
Deliberations are ongoing and talks could still fall through, the people said. A spokesman for Uber declined to comment, while a representative for Grubhub couldn’t immediately comment.
Grubhub shares climbed as much as 37% in New York trading after being temporarily halted. They were up 33% at 12:14 p.m., valuing the company at $5.7 billion. Uber, with a market value of about $59 billion, rose as much as 8.2%.
Uber is shuttering its own food-delivery unit, Uber Eats, in seven countries where the service has proven unpopular, it said last week. Those markets represented 1% of Uber Eats gross bookings and 4% of the business’s adjusted losses before interest, taxes and depreciation for the first quarter of 2020, the company said.
Uber’s ride-hailing business has been hammered by the global pandemic, but delivering meals has helped the San Francisco-based company drive sales as people shelter in place. Still, the food delivery industry remains widely unprofitable, even as people rely on delivery to stay in their homes.
Though the losses have led to much speculation on potential consolidation in the industry, lofty private valuations and antitrust concerns have made some food-delivery players resistant to striking a deal. Those issues may be easier to iron out for Grubhub and Uber, which both have publicly traded stocks. A year after Uber’s public offering, the company still trades below its peak valuation as a private company.
A deal “would help consolidate the U.S. online food delivery market and reduce cash burn,” Bloomberg Intelligence senior industry analyst Mandeep Singh wrote in a note Tuesday.
Meanwhile, startups DoorDash Inc. and Postmates Inc. have increased the competitive pressure on incumbent Grubhub, which was founded in 2004. Grubhub has expanded into doing delivery itself after years of serving as a marketing platform for restaurants to organize their own deliveries. The rivalries have squeezed Grubhub’s margins, with the coronavirus adding further pressure that forced the company to push off profit targets. Uber, similarly, delayed its target to reach adjusted profitability until sometime in 2021.
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—Remote work, online grocery shopping, cord cutting: What coronavirus trends will stick
—No buses, no problem. Some cities provide subsidized Uber rides amid pandemic
—How to choose a video chat app? Grade it on privacy
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: Zoom’s ups and downs since the coronavirus crisis
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-05-12--Broadway’s ‘Hamilton’ will premiere on Disney+ in July, instead of going to theaters first in 2021

If you haven’t seen the original Broadway cast perform Hamilton, here’s your best chance to be in the room where it happens.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit Broadway musical about the founding father is hitting Disney+ July 3, which means Disney is streaming it well before its original plans for an Oct. 15, 2021 theatrical release date.
The “live capture” Disney+ version was recorded in June 2016 at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, featuring original members of the cast, including Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, Phillipa Soo as Eliza Hamilton, and Leslie Odom, Jr. as Aaron Burr.
Disney reportedly paid $75 million for the worldwide rights to the Tony Award-winning stage show, possibly making it the largest film acquisition deal. The financial implications of switching to streaming have yet to be seen.
It’s only a matter of time…
Our Hamilton film.
THIS July 3rd.
On Disney+.#Hamilfilm pic.twitter.com/cXTM949hRr — Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) May 12, 2020
This isn’t Disney’s first time adjusting plans for its streaming service, especially as the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt work on film and TV production. Artemis Fowl, originally planned for a May 29 theatrical release, is supposed to debut on the streamer June 12. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker made its streaming debut a couple of months early as well, arriving on Disney+ last week for Star Wars Day. While hit series The Mandalorian‘s second season shouldn’t be delayed, other Disney+ series have hit production problems amid the pandemic.
Meanwhile, another of Miranda’s projects—the film adaptation of musical In the Heights—has seen its theatrical release pushed a whole year to summer 2021.
Hamilton, which melds musical genres from hip-hop to contemporary pop and traditional showtunes, remained a hot ticket on Broadway years after its debut, having grossed nearly $650 million since its 2015 opening prior to the pandemic-induced shutdown of theaters. The show has also been performed in other U.S. cities including Washington, D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco, while also making its way to London’s West End. But tickets can be notoriously difficult to get, which means the Disney+ debut could be the first time many get to watch the show.


fortune--2020-05-12--We don’t have data that represents the new normal

Artificial intelligence can’t keep up with the coronavirus.
Many companies are therefore having to rethink the complex models they use for the all-important job of forecasting their sales and budgets. The data and assumptions baked into those statistical or machine-learning models are now out of date because of the recent economic upheaval, making the conclusion they provide suspect.
“Our historical, analytical data—what we used in the past—is out the door,” Paul Cormier, CEO of IBM-owned business software maker Red Hat, recently told Fortune. “I think everyone feels that way.”
Doug Merritt, the CEO of IT firm Splunk, shares Cormier’s sentiment. Improving the accuracy of corporate forecasting is something “we are all struggling with,” he said. Although Merritt said models provide accurate short-term forecasts, it’s challenging to develop ones that look 30 to 120 days down the road.
As Rob Thomas, the senior vice president of IBM’s cloud and data platform, said, “In any instance, your models are only as good as the data.”
“When something happened that didn’t happen before, most organizations don’t have data that represents the new normal,” Thomas said. On the flip side, he explained that as companies continue collecting more data during this pandemic, they’ll have a better understanding about this “new normal.”
Thomas believes that companies should “never throw out data” and “never throw out models.” They still carry “institutional” knowledge, and if a company were to build newer models from scratch, they would lose some historical insights built into the older formulas, he explained.
If anything, the coronavirus pandemic has meant that now, more than ever, there needs to be an actual person scrutinizing financial models and not just technology, Thomas explained. Savvy data scientists and business analysts need to use their “human intuition” and reasoning skills to assess how much worth should be placed on the predictions of the impacted models.
“You see a lot of people doing that.” Thomas said.
As for whether companies should expect machine learning or other predictive systems to automatically adjust to sudden upheavals like the coronavirus, it’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
“That would be the Holy Grail,” Thomas said.
P.S. We’d love to hear any interesting methods you or your company may be implementing to make predictive models more robust during this coronavirus pandemic. Feel free to email me—I’m interested in hearing your story. (Please no vendor pitches!)
Jonathan Vanian
@JonathanVanian
jonathan.vanian@fortune.com
A.I. IN THE NEWS
Bye Bye fingerprints, hello facial recognition. Biometric technologies related to the “fingerprint and vein” have been “dealt a substantial blow” because of government policies intended to mitigate physical contact amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to the advisory firm ABI Research. The research firm also said that the biometrics industry is excited about improvements in “face and iris recognition” that will allow for better “authentication, identification, and surveillance operations for users and citizens wearing protective headgear, face masks, or, with partially covered faces.” Chinese tech companies SenseTime, Megvii, Alibaba, and Baidu are leading investments in this area, ABI said.
Mercedes speeds towards A.I. Mercedes-Benz is using natural language processing techniques to improve the company’s MBUX infotainment system for its automobiles, CNET reported. Mercedes is deciding on a possible option for users that would remove its wake-word command “Hey, Mercedes” to activate the service, which the article states “means the MBUX assistant will always be listening, chiming in when the AI algorithm deems it appropriate.” A Mercedes executive said the company “will be very careful on that one" and “will offer something only if the customer wants it.”
IBM pushes into “AIOps.” IBM debuted new services related to a trendy kind of IT monitoring technology that analysts have referred to as AIOps. The term acts as a catch-all referring to using machine-learning technology to analyze server data like “log data” in the hopes of spotting errors and preventing crashes before they occur.
Investors are digging robotic software. Covariant, a startup developing robotic gripping software, got $40 million in funding from investors including Index Ventures, Radical Ventures, and Amplify Ventures. Covariant recently partnered with industrial robotics giant ABB to develop more capable robots, targeting the logistics space in particular.
EYE ON A.I. TALENT
Twitter added deep-learning expert Fei-Fei Li to the company's board of directors. Li, a co-director of Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute, oversaw the milestone ImageNet computer-vision contest that helped spur a renaissance in deep learning. She was also previously the chief scientist of A.I. and machine learning at Google, but left shortly after news organizations started reporting on Google's internal struggles over potential A.I. projects with the Pentagon.
Najat Khan said via LinkedIn that she is now the chief data science officer at the research and development arm of Janssen, a pharmaceutical firm owned by Johnson & Johnson. Khan was previously the chief operating officer of Janssen’s R&D data sciences unit and was a senior principal at Boston Consulting Group.
Giancarlo Miluccio is leaving L'Oréal as the personal care company’s chief data officer based in France. Miluccio announced his departure in a LinkedIn post but did not say where he is going.
EYE ON A.I. RESEARCH
Reinforcement learning meets economics. Researchers from Salesforce and Harvard University published a non-peer-reviewed research paper detailing how reinforcement learning—when software learns through repetition—could be applied to the field of economics.
Salesforce chief scientist Richard Socher told Fortune that the paper is the “most impactful project I’ve ever worked on.” The paper describes how Salesforce created a deep-reinforcement-learning system that was able to devise an equitable tax policy within the confines of a custom-built video game. The A.I. system’s tax policy performed better than other tax policies including the free-market system, the U.S. federal single-filer 2018 tax schedule, and the Saez tax framework, according to the paper’s authors.
Salesforce researchers were particularly pleased that their A.I. system was able to take in account factors including the notion that people may not feel like working too much if they don’t have to pay taxes. It also takes in account that while people may enjoy working for money, there’s a limit to how much they’re willing to put in on the job—after all, people do like their weekends.
Socher concedes that the research is still in its infancy, and it’s not realistic to assume real-life economists are going to be incorporating the technology into their practice. For one, the reinforcement-learning system was built to learn from a relatively primitive video game, underscoring how current RL systems are limited by the digital environments they’re trained in. There are only four “agents” in the video game, which are not representative of the billions of people (or millions of companies) around the world who have to pay taxes each year. And the game’s economy is simplistic, consisting of the four agents doing tasks like collecting stones and wood, trading those resources, and building homes.
Additionally, the A.I. system doesn’t take in account the political factors that are often the reason why lawmakers choose to implement certain tax policies. I’d personally love to see A.I. agents that represent companies as well as virtual recreations of tax havens like the Cayman Islands.
Future research will include building a more complex video game and increasing the number of A.I. agents, Salesforce researchers said. One benefit of the company’s virtual economy is that the A.I. system can learn from “millions of years of simulation” that wouldn’t be possible in the real world, Socher said. Still, it takes a tremendous amount of computing power to run those millions of years of simulation, and Salesforce researchers declined to comment on how much it cost to train their A.I. system.
Ultimately, Socher said he’s hopeful that the A.I. system will improve over time and act as a starting point for economists interested in experimenting with reinforcement-learning techniques. The research marks another example of researchers applying reinforcement-learning techniques to areas besides competitive video games where one player needs to beat another.
FORTUNE ON A.I.
IBM thinks tech being tested by astronauts could help us take care of isolated loved ones—By Jeremy Kahn
How A.I. may help solve science’s ‘reproducibility’ crisis—By Jonathan Vanian
Alphabet vets raise $400 million to remake America’s infrastructure—By Jeff John Roberts
In defense of Elon Musk—By Aaron Pressman
BRAIN FOOD
The diverging paths of two self-driving car pioneers. Self-driving car pioneers Bryan Salesky and Anthony Levandowski are the subjects of two different profiles by Wired and Automotive News, respectively. Salesky, the CEO of Argo AI, has essentially become Ford’s golden child as the auto giant pursues self-driving vehicles. In 2017, Ford pledged to invest $1 billion in Argo AI over a five-year period. Meanwhile, Levandowski has become “the personification of Silicon Valley’s more unseemly impulses,” according to Automotive News, as he recently plead guilty of taking corporate documents from Google (where he once worked) to Uber.
As Automotive News puts it: “Recently divorced, bankrupt and an admitted thief, Levandowski has seen much of the legacy he created now in tatters.”
Contrast Levandowski’s epic fall with the following critique of Salesky (also a former Google employee) in the Wired piece: “Some former Google colleagues charge him with a lack of charisma, which they deem a handicap when it comes to motivating a team to overcome a brutally difficult obstacle, even if they don’t have to worry too much about 2021.”
Salesky’s greatest fault is that he’s boring, which, compared to Levandowski’s antics, doesn’t sound too shabby.
Update May 12: Story corrected to say Ford's investment was $1 billion over a five-year period.


fortune--2020-05-12--Antibody testing will be key—once we understand what the results mean

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Antibodies are curious biological beasts. These Y-shaped proteins—telltale markers that indicate a body’s immune system has responded to a biological intruder—can neutralize pathogens by sticking to specific sites on a virus or other adversary and marshaling the forces that can kill them off. They can be manufactured in labs by inducing immune responses in order to create medicines which fight everything from cancer to COVID-19 itself. And, critically, during the coronavirus pandemic, sensing the presence of antibodies will be essential to containing the outbreak and inform how we can reopen the economy and society at large.
The COVID-19 crisis has whipped up a storm of questions which cut to the heart of science, epidemiology, and the broad mechanisms of public health. What do we know about the virus’ spread? Which treatments may or may not be effective? What’s the best strategy for returning to something approaching “normal”?
Antibody testing will be a key tool for answering those questions, according to senior government officials, pharmaceutical industry veterans, and academic experts who spoke with Fortune. But, as with everything linked to this insidious scourge, it’s complicated. It will take time to parse the information and develop the appropriate regulatory guidance we need to figure out which tests work best—and what, exactly, they’re telling us about the nature of the coronavirus and immunity to this pathogen.
The ‘Wild West’ of antibody testing gets a checkup
The key question for any diagnostic is fairly straightforward: Does this thing actually work? But answering it is, frustratingly, trickier than you might think. And in the midst of a pandemic, regulators have to balance the need to rush experimental tests to patients while also gauging their efficacy.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted emergency authorization to a dozen COVID-19 antibody blood tests to date. The initial carte blanche approach has elicited criticism from the medical community, with some warning of a “Wild West” scenario that may galvanize snake oil salesmen and leave the public with inaccurate information.
More than 70 companies have flocked to the gold rush that is developing experimental COVID-19 antibody tests, which can be conducted more easily than other types of coronavirus diagnostics. Emergency authorizations come with a lower scrutiny level than full approvals or clearances under regulatory guidelines, two senior FDA officials explained.
Other kinds of coronavirus tests, including so-called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology, often require a nasal or throat swab (or both) and take longer to conduct. They may require very specific equipment at specialized labs. These tests can tell medical professionals if someone has an “acute infection”—if the virus is actively circulating in their system.
But antibody tests are serological tests that can be done with a simple blood draw and help determine if someone has had a previous COVID-19 infection they’ve recovered from. Someone who has recovered could, theoretically, safely return to work or go out in public without risking spreading the coronavirus to more vulnerable people.
The trouble is we’re still not sure just what the presence of coronavirus antibodies means. Would they suggest immunity for up to two years, as was the case with most patients who contracted SARS, a different type of coronavirus? Or might it be a shorter immunity period? There have been reports that some patients have re-tested positive after initial infection, though it’s unclear whether that’s due to an initial false positive result. And which companies’ tests, specifically, will provide the most accurate information?
“One of the challenges is that it’s a new virus,” says Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida and expert in epidemiology. “What’s probably going to happen is there’s going to be some level of immunity, but we don’t know for how long. We’re going to have to do followups of patients over time for antibodies.”
In the case of antibody tests, this presents a chicken-and-egg dilemma, according to the senior FDA officials. The agency’s initial focus in March was on providing widespread access to antibody tests. The officials emphasized that far more data would be required for diagnostics in a non-emergency situation.
The FDA updated its initial March guidance for antibody testing earlier this month in an effort to crack down on companies making misleading claims and to clarify its quality control responsibilities.
“At the time we issued our March 16 policy, a higher level of flexibility was appropriate for antibody tests than for molecular tests that detect the presence of the virus that causes COVID-19, since antibody tests are not meant for use to diagnose active SARS-CoV-2 infection,” wrote regulators in a public statement in May, adding that more than 200 antibody tests are going through the pre-emergency authorization or authorization process. They also stated that the FDA is working with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to determine how effective certain tests are.
Back in April, many of the antibody tests hitting the market hadn’t even received FDA authorization, much less a wider accounting of their accuracy.
What are the most promising antibody tests?
New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic, has launched a free and widespread antibody testing effort that could reach up to 140,000 residents. The trouble is that even if coronavirus antibodies ultimately confer immunity for some time, testing can’t become a reliable tool for getting people back to work unless there’s a baseline of how effective such tests are.
There are two key metrics to determining the accuracy of an antibody test. The first is something called “sensitivity”—this is a measure that tells you how accurate a test is in identifying people who actually have antibodies and thus have been exposed to infection (otherwise known as the the true positive rate). The second is “specificity,” which provides the flip side of the data—who doesn’t have antibodies.
“Sensitivity is sensing those who have been sick, specificity is spotting the lack of past or recent infection,” says Alan Wright, the chief medical officer at Roche Diagnostics, which claims to have one of the most accurate COVID-19 antibody tests cleared for emergency use.
Roche has said that its diagnostic has a staggering 100% sensitivity rate and a more than 99.8% specificity rate. Rival Abbott Laboratories has received two emergency authorizations with similar accuracy claims for its own antibody test.
FDA officials and Roche’s Wright underscored the importance of using a combination of tests—and sharing data across agencies—to truly understand the scope of immunity and the infection rate across the public. In the past few months, a team of researchers from UC Berkeley, UCSF, and other academic institutes have been working to validate the accuracy of tests on the market with decidedly mixed results.
“This is part of a suite of tests,” says Wright. “We don’t approach diagnostics in isolation.” For instance, the sensitivity and specificity of an antibody test such as Roche’s may have to be done several weeks after an initial coronavirus PCR test which confirms an active infection.
The accuracy of these tests will also help inform drug makers of the best approaches to COVID-19 drug and vaccine development. Longer-term data about immunity and the staying power of COVID-19 antibodies may spell the difference between a one-time vaccine like with measles or a seasonal one such as influenza. But that process will take even longer to play out.
“There are two components to approval for a diagnostic,” says Wright. “One is analytical evidence, or just general data-gathering. The other is clinical evidence that can fuel the drug development process and tell us more about immunity and the virus’ long-term effects on the health system.”
Those are fundamental aspects of understanding a new pathogen. “Antibody tests give us a bigger picture of the range of disease,” says Dean, the biostatistician. “They’re especially useful for identifying high-risk groups. [They] let us see at the highest-risk occupations such as factories where people are in close quarters. But you have to piece these things together from a bunch of different sources.”


fortune--2020-05-12--Coronavirus, the great corporate smokescreen

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Having a bad quarter? The coronavirus is probably the reason.
Quibi, the short-form video streaming app formed by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, is definitely blaming the pandemic for its anemic performance.
“I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Katzenberg, a film producer whose credits include The Little Mermaid and The Lion King, told the New York Times. “Everything. But we own it.”
Despite a roster of bite-sized shows bolstered by the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Chrissy Teigen, Quibi dropped off of the list of top 50 most downloaded free iPhone apps in the U.S. a week after it went live.
Certainly, launching a product in the middle of coronavirus is no easy feat—especially not one that was designed for on-the-go consumers. But blaming it solely on the coronavirus rings hollow for an online-only business when customers desperate for entertainment are flocking to every other streaming service, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube.
KKR bets on beauty: Nail polish and makeup can become a form of therapy in recessions, and the beauty industry at large held up better than other industries during past downturns. French cosmetics giant L’Oréal famously posted higher revenues in 2008 as consumers looked for cheap ways to feel good about themselves. In the middle of the coronavirus, though, nail salons and hair stylists are closed for business, few people appear to be putting on makeup while working from home, and early signs show the industry is taking a hit.
Still, buyout giant KKR, with experience handling the likes of Unilever, is investing in troubled and debt-laden beauty giant Coty. KKR will invest an initial $750 million in the mass market-focused company via a sale of convertible preferred shares, and plans to acquire 60% of the company’s professional beauty and retail hair operations (Wella, Clairol, OPI and ghd brands) in a deal that values the carveout at $4.3 billion. Coty expects to gain cash proceeds of $3 billion from the divestment.
Remember Webvan? The rapid rise and fall of grocery delivery startup Webvan is often cited as a poster child for the headiness of the dot-com bubble. The company raised $1.2 billion fast from the likes of Sequoia, Benchmark, and SoftBank, and then went bankrupt after four years.
Now, as grocery delivery takes off amid the pandemic, Webvan founder Louis Borders is looking to Silicon Valley once again to fund his newest startup, focusing on where Webvan had failed two decades earlier. Borders tells Term Sheet that Home Delivery Services (HDS Global), founded in 2012, is looking to raise $25 million in Series A funding from “top tier” venture capital firms.
HDS, a warehouse automation startup that counts Ingram Micro and Toyota among its current investors, plans to use that capital to build out its first fulfillment center in San Francisco with an eye toward making deliveries to customers sometime next year. It plans to start with groceries and general merchandise first.
HDS is moving into a crowded market, with the likes of Amazon and Instacart all part of the pie—but Borders believes the industry is nascent, and that he can differentiate HDS enough by using proprietary software and robots to pack and move products across the warehouse (compared to Instacart, which has human shoppers), while using in-house delivery people (like Amazon Fresh does). The robotics, according to the company, “removes all human hands from the fulfillment process.”
A high tide doesn’t lift all boats though, as Borders knows well. He says about Webvan’s failures: “They moved too fast and they moved to open up 20 plus locations in one year when they should have opened two or three. Premature scaling is the number-one reason startups fail.”
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- UpKeep, a Los Angeles-based platform for maintenance and operations teams, raised $36 million in Series B funding. Insight Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Emergence Capital, Battery Ventures, Y Combinator, Mucker Capital, and Fundersclub.
- Lilt, a San Francisco-based AI-powered translation company, raised $25 million in Series B funding. Intel Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures, In-Q-Tel, and XSeed Capital.
- Nanit, a New York-based baby monitor and sleep tracker maker, raised $21 million in funding. Jerusalem Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Rho invested.
- IRP Systems, a Tel Aviv-based electric powertrain products provider, raised $17 million in Series B funding. Fosun RZ Capital led the round and was joined by investors including JAL Ventures.
- Zeus Living, a San Francisco-based property management service for rentals, raised about $15 million in equity and debt at a valuation of about $110 million from existing investors CEAS Investments I, Initialized Capital Management, and Soros Fund Management, according to Bloomberg citing sources. Read more.
- Clyde, a New York-based startup focused on extended warranty product protection, raised $14 million in Series A funding. Spark Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Crosslink, RRE, Rea Sea Ventures, and others. Read more.
- Shiprocket, a New Delhi-based logistics aggregator,raised $13 million in Series C funding. Tribe Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Innoven Capital and existing investor Bertelsmann India Investments. Read more.
- WakeData, a Chinese big data solutions provider,raised $10 million in Series B funding. Redpoint Ventures China and Sequoia Capital China led the round, and was joined by investors including IDG Capital. Read more.
- PlayPlay, a Paris-based video content creation tool, raised €10 million ($10.8 million) in Series A funding. Balderton Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Point Nine and Kerala Ventures. Read more.
- Monument, a New York-based telemedicine platform focused on alcoholism, raised $7.5 million in seed funding. Lerer Hippeau, Collaborative Fund, Red Sea Ventures, NextView Ventures, Corigin Ventures, and Data Point Capital invested. Read more.
- Primer, a U.K.-based payments fintech, raised £3.8 million ($4.6 million) in seed funding. Balderton Capital led the round. Read more.
- Shoreline, a Stavanger, Norway-based renewable energy development and operations software company for wind projects, raised $4 million Series A funding. Ingenious led the round and was joined by investors including Blue Bear Capital, Alliance Ventures, and Investinor.
- LexCheck, a New York-based AI legal technology platform, raised $3 million in seed funding. Kli Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Howard Morgan (retired co-founder of First Round Capital) and Vivek Garipalli ( CEO of Clover Health).
- Construyo, a Berlin-based construction project management service, raised €2million ($2.2 million) in Seed funding from Talis Capital.
- Rogue Games, a Los Angeles-based game publishing company, raised $2 million in funding. Runa Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Mighty Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Grishin Robotics.
- Vochi, a Belarus-based “computer vision”-based video editing and effects app for mobile phones, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. Genesis Investments led the round. Read more.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- The Carlyle Group agreed to acquire up to 74% of SeQuent Scientific Limited, an Indian animal healthcare company, for about $210 million.
- Spectrum Equity invested $144 million in DispatchTrack, a San Jose-based company dealing with last-mile logistics.
- KKR acquired 5.2% of ProSiebenSat.1 Media, a German broadcaster. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Read more.
- INVL Baltic Sea Growth Fund acquired a controlling stake in Eco Baltia, a Latvian-based waste collection company. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Right Networks, a portfolio company of BV Investment Partners, acquired Rootworks, a Bloombington, In.-based platform for accounting firms and small businesses. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- ClearLight Partners invested in ICS, an Endicott, New York-based provider of IT managed services. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Clayton, Dubilier & Rice acquired Radio Systems Corporation, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based pet health and safety company. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
IPOS
- ZoomInfo Technologies, a Vancouver, Wash.-based platform for sales and marketing, plans to move forward with its IPO in June, per Bloomberg. The company previously filed for a $500 million in an initial public offering. It posted revenue of $293 million in 2019 and loss of $78 million. TA Associates and Carlyle back the firm. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “ZI.” Read more.
- New Horizon Health, a Chinese maker of home test kits for colon cancer, is considering raising about $300 million via an IPO in Hong Kong. Qiming Venture Partners and Duke Management Co. are investors. Read more.
- ADC Therapeutics SA, a Switzerland-based biotech focused on antibody therapies for cancer, plans to raise $125 million in an IPO of 7.4 million shares priced between $16 to $18 apiece. It posted revenue of $2.3 million and losses of $116.5 million in 2018. Auven Therapeutics (42.8% pre-offering) and AstraZeneca (7.1%) back the firm. It plans to list on the NYSE as “ADCT.” Read more.
- Pliant Therapeutics, a San Francisco-based Phase 2 biotech developing therapies for the treatment of fibrosis, filed for an $86 million IPO. It posted revenue of $57.1 million in 2019 and loss of $631 million in 2019. Third Rock Ventures (32.3% pre-offering), Eventide Asset Management (9.3%), and Redmile Biopharma (7.8%) back the firm.. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “PLRX.” Read more.
- Deutsche Bahn, a German state-owned rail operator, is delaying IPO plans of its international passenger transport business Arriva, per Reuters. Read more.
OTHERS
- SSR Mining will acquire Alacer Gold, a Denver, Colo.-based mining company, in an all-stock deal valued at C$2.41 billion ($1.72 billion).
- Tencent invested in Tim Hortons China, the Chinese arm of the Canadian coffee brewer. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- ECI Software Solutions acquired BuildTools, a Minnesota-based web-based construction management platform. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE: PNC) plans to sell its 22.4% stake in BlackRock (NYSE: BLK). PNC owns 34.8 million common and Series B preferred shares of Blackrock, representing 22.4% ownership.
- Mak Capital One invested $35 million in Agilysys (Nasdaq: AGYS), an Alpharetta, Ga.-based provider of hospitality software solutions and services. The investment comes in the form of preferred stock.
- Atlassian acquired Halp, a Boulder, Colo-based tool that integrates with Slack as a customer support solution. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
BANKRUPTCIES AND BREAKUPS
- Chesapeake Energy, an Oklahoma City-based oil exploration company, is weighing a bankruptcy filing. Read more.
EXITS
- Melody Investment Advisors acquired 90% of Uniti Towers, a Little Rock, Ar.-based wireless tower business, from real estate investment trust Uniti Group (NASDAQ: UNIT) for $220 million in cash.
- AAC Capital sold Corilus, a Belgium-based provider of software solutions to the primary care market, to Gilde Buy Out Partners. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
F+FS
- Amulet Capital Partners raised $210.8 million for its second fund, according to an SEC filing. Read more.