GRAPHICS OUTFIT Nvidia will allegedly show off the much-leaked GeForce RTX 2060 GPU during its CES presser on 7 January. So says Videocardz, which claims to have seen a reviewers' guide for the RTX 2060, in which all the GPU's specs, features and performance targets are revealed. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream card will be based on the Pascal architecture that debuted with the high-end GeForce RTX 2070, GeForce RTX 2080 and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. It'll offer a cut-down take on Nvidia's flagship GPUs, though, packing 1,920 CUDA cores compared to the 2,304 the RTX 2070 has on offer. The leaked info claims the card will also include 240 tensor cores, 30 ray tracing cores and 6GB GDDR6 memory while offering clock speeds in the 1365 MHz and 1680 MHz range and up to 6.5 TFLOPs of compute performance. The Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition (pictured), which looks identical to the RTX 2070, will come equipped with a single 8-pin power connector, two DisplayPort outputs, HDMI, DVI and USB TypeC connectors, according to the leak. As for performance stats, Videocardz posted both 1080p and 1440p results for the RTX 2060 while comparing it to the GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1070 Ti and GTX 1080; it was faster than the GTX 1070 Ti in 12 out of the 20 titles tested, and faster than the FTX 1080 in three. Earlier leaked RTX 2070 benchmarks, which tested the GPU 3840x2160 (4K) resolution with the High Quality preset, saw the card earn a score of 2,589 - a fairly major 30 per cent bump compared to the 1,956 score earned by the 6GB variant of the GTX 1060. It closed in on the GeForce RTX 1070, too, with the latter being just 6.18 per cent faster. In these benchmarks, the card also outperformed AMD's Radeon RX 590 graphics cards by 22 per cent, but failed to topple the AMD Radeon RX Vega, which beat it by 4.44 per cent. The new model will be available in stores starting from 15 January, and will reportedly fetch $350 (£275). Buyers of the GeForce RTX 2060 will reportedly get a choice of Battlefield V or Anthem for free. INQ will be out at CES, and we'll bring you all of the latest as it happens. µ

RUSSIAN RETAILER E-Katalog appears to have spilled details about AMD's forthcoming Ryzen CPUs, including the Ryzen 9 3800X CPU that will offer 16 cores, 32 threads and a boost clock speed of 4.7GHz. Described as Ryzen 9 Matisse by the online retailer (Matisse being the code name for the Zen 2 architecture), it will - as expected - be built to TSMC's 7nm process. However, that's not all. The retailer appears to have published the raw details of all the forthcoming Ryzen CPUs, from the Ryzen 3 all the way up to the aforementioned Ryzen 9. The Ryzen 7 3700X looks like a particularly interesting part: it will be the first AMD Ryzen CPU to hit the 5GHz clock speed out of the box, albeit in boost mode. This mirrors Intel's efforts to offer some highly clocked CPUs in a bid to stay ahead of newly invigorated AMD as the Zen architecture matures. However, even the entry-level Ryzen 3 CPUs will get a core and thread-count boost. The Ryzen 3 3300 will get six cores and 12 threads while running at a base speed of 3.2GHz. Meanwhile, its (no doubt) slightly more expensive Ryzen 3 stablemate, the 3300X, will offer 3.5GHz out of the box for the same number of cores and threads. Full details below: Model Cores Threads Base clock Boost clock TDP Ryzen 9 3800X 16 32 3.9GHz 4.7GHz 125W Ryzen 7 3700X 12 24 4.2GHz 5.0GHz 105W Ryzen 7 3700 12 24 3.8GHz 4.6GHz 95W Ryzen 5 3600X 8 16 4.0GHz 4.8GHz 95W Ryzen 5 3600 8 16 3.6GHz 4.4GHz 65W Ryzen 3 3300X 6 12 3.5GHz 4.3GHz 65W Ryzen 3 3300 6 12 3.2GHz 4.0GHz 50W The bean spillage has since been cleaned up by E-Katalog, but not before the specialist Videocardz website got the screen grabs. Enthusiasts won't have to wait long for confirmation, however. AMD CEO Lisa Su will be giving a keynote at the CES 2019 tradeshow in Las Vegas next week where she is expected to provide more details on AMD's upcoming 7nm Zen 2-based CPUs. We'll be there to bring you all of the latest. µ

THESE DAYS, phone users want their devices to boast epic cameras, and the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and Google Pixel 3 XL are by far the most impressive the market has to offer right now. But which handset has the edge? And what about battery life, screen, design and performance? If we were to compare all the features that make a great smartphone between these two handsets, which one would win? Well, that's exactly what we're about to find out. We've pitted the Mate 20 Pro and Pixel 3 XL in a battle of the behemoths to see which comes out on top. Design If you're looking for something new and fresh, the Pixel 3 XL doesn't really cut it in terms of design; it's pretty much the same as the Pixel 2 XL, but this time it offers a more rounded chassis and a smooth glass back rather than a textured metal rear. Still, this has a lovely silky feel and makes the handset nicer to hold, if a tad more slippery, than its older sibling. The glass also equips the Pixel 3 XL with support for wireless charging, which can be done using the Pixel Stand that also turns the phone into a pseudo smart speaker with the Google Assistant listening out for commands. The Mate 20 Pro sees Huawei embracing a curved glass unibody, something a little different from your bog-standard smartphone design, and the screen creates an illusion of virtually no bezel. As with the Pixel 3 XL, there's a notch for the front-facing camera, whether you're a fan of them or not. In terms of looks, the Mate 20 Pro's twilight glass back is super fancy and gives it a much more premium look. And like the Pixel 3 XL, the Mate 20 Pro is slippy in the hand due to the smooth texture of its chassis. However, it's IP67 rated, meaning it can be dropped into a body of water up to a meter deep for half an hour, whereas the pixel is IPX8 rated, which means it can stand continuous immersion in depths over one metre, but it's not dust-tight like the Mate. Winner: Mate 20 Pro Display Google has equipped the Pixel 3 XL with a 6.3in screen, a tad larger than the Pixel 2 XL's 6in display. To do this it has had to opt for a screen notch. As we already mentioned, the Mate 20 Pro boasts a small notch where the front-facing camera sits, but on the Pixel 3 XL it's a slightly chunkier affair that looks kinda ugly, somehow. The extra 0.3in of screen space doesn't allow you to see more, either, eating into the side of videos when they're made to fill the entire display. You can hide it by having a virtual bezel put in place but then you'd be wasting the extra screen space it provides. Google has opted for a straightforward AMOLED display. Sporting an 18:9 aspect ratio, the Pixel 3 XL rocks a resolution of 1440x2960. Everything you'll ogle on the display will look sharp and clear, with accurate colours, decent contrast and solid brightness. The Mate 20 Pro's display is simply beautiful, capable of a resolution up to WQHD+, that's 3120x1440 pixels to be exact, which is much bigger than the Pixel 3 XL. The 6.39in curved OLED boasts a super wide angle screen aspect ratio of 19.5:9, much wider than that of the Pixel, too. The only annoying thing here - and it's really annoying - is that the curved screen at the edges can warp the display at the sides, making it seem smaller. We definitely prefer the wider ratio of the Pixel 3 XL, and the bigger resolution on the Mate is unnoticeable if you put the smartphones side by side Winner: Pixel 3 XL Performance Like most other Android flagships, the Pixel 3 XL comes with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845, which we'd have to admit, is due a refresh. Nevertheless, it's still the top chip in Qualcomm's repertoire. This is paired with 4GB of RAM, which is fine albeit somewhat behind the curve when it comes to other flagships, especially the Mate 20 Pro, which touts 6GB of RAM. Nevertheless, everything loads fast with the Pixel 3 XL and even with a slew of apps open there's no hint of slowdown. But then we'd expect nothing less of Google given how slick previous Pixels have been. Huawei's latest beast doesn't opt for a Qualcomm offering and instead boasts the firm's own chip, the Kirin 980, which was revealed at IFA earlier this year. It's the beating heart of the Mate 20 Pro and makes everything feel much faster. As well as huge speed boosts and the GPU-Boost patch offered to Huawei phones this year, the 980 also boasts two NPU - neural processing units. In other words, the AI has two brains. This means that it can preempt you, at least a little, in terms of which apps to put near the top, which is a nice to have. However, both phones perform effortlessly, despite the Mate winner on specs, so it'd be hard to choose a winner here. Winner: Draw Software What the Pixel 3 XL does showcase well is how neatly all of Google's services and apps integrate, thanks to its bare Android UI. Getting stuff done in Gmail and attaching files from Drive, for example, is super easy, while backing up pics to the Photos app with all its intelligent tagging and management tools is likely to remain much appreciated by snap-happy folks. Huawei's Mate 20 Pro comes with EMUI 9.0, the company's fork of Android 9.0 Pie. While it's a quite heavily skinned version of the mobile OS, the whole thing zips along with buttery smooth scrolling and without a hint of lag. The responsiveness to tasks like opening apps is strikingly better than the firm's older handsets. However, nothing quite beats the simplicity of Google's own, unskinned version of Android. Winner: Pixel 3 XL Camera Now it's time to compare one of the most important aspects that people look for these days when buying a new smartphone: the camera. The camera on the Pixel 2 was one of the best smartphone snappers around, despite the use of a single lens. Surprisingly, the Pixel 3 XL sticks with the single rear camera setup, unlike almost every other flagship phone and in terms of hardware. Te camera is pretty much unchanged from its predecessor, too, boasting a 12.2MP sensor and a lens offering an aperture of f/1.8. Optical image stabilisation is present and correct but there's no telephoto lens for analogue zooming. So on paper, the camera prompts a shrug. However, Google's strength here is only partly in its hardware - the real photo wizardry comes with the smarts it applies it photography. Using the custom Visual Core image signal processor chip in conjunction with the search giant's artificial intelligence (AI) smarts, the camera snaps multiple pics at a tap of the shutter button, analyses them and sticks together the best picture the camera can conjure up. Despite this arguably synthetic process, the results are fantastic. There's plenty of detail, accurate colours and contrast. However, the difference between photos snapped on the Pixel 3 XL and those on the Pixel 2 handsets isn't very obvious, which leads us to think Google hasn't progressed the tech that much in the past year. Either that, or the snapper on the XL 2 was just so much ahead of the curve already. Without a doubt, the Pixel 3 XL has an amazing camera and one of the best overall mobile snappers around. The first thing you'll notice on the Mate 20 Pro is that the camera arrangement on the back replaces the vertical line of lenses as seen on previous flagship devices, with a 2x2 arrangement right in the middle. It's perhaps a little in-your-face, but it makes a statement, that's for sure. This arrangement boasts what Huawei is calling "the world's first Ultra Wide Angle Leica triple camera". That's a rear set up of a 40MP, 20MP, and an 8MP snapper. The monochrome lens from the P20 has been replaced by a wide-angle offering, which alongside the 40MP Leica array, has won the Mate 20 Pro a lot of fans. The AI in the camera mode is fantastic and super clever, detecting the environment you are in as soon as you hold up the phone to your subject, and adjusting the settings appropriately. On the Mate 20 Pro, it does seem to have been tightened up, too, and it feels like Huawei's AI camera abilities are getting stronger with every release. Results are, therefore, nothing short of epic. However, sometimes we do feel like it tries a little *too* hard at times, with images looking a little too busy or over-saturated. However, when it comes to the best phones from Google and Huawei, what separates their photography chops will mostly come down to a matter of preference, as each of the phones' cameras are phenomenal in their own right. We hate doing it, but we're going to have to call this one a draw. Winner: Draw Battery life Another feature that people really look out for when buying a new handset is battery life. The Pixel 3 XL boasts a 3,430mAh battery, which we found didn't really yield much more than a day's worth of medium use. Fondle the phone a fair bit with the display brightness cranked and you'll need to charge the battery come the evening time. So battery life isn't bad but it's not class-leading by any measure. The battery on the Mate 20 Pro, however, which is already bolstered by the efficiencies of the Kirin 980, clocks in at a whopping 4,200mAh. During use, we found the handset would easily last a full day and into the next, and can imagine it would even be the case for those of us who live with devices glued to our faces. Winner: Mate 20 Pro Storage The Pixel 3 XL offers users a non-expandable storage option of either 64GB or 128GB, both of which are perfectly fine unless you go mad on apps and massive files. Then there's Google's Cloud, which is so well integrated into Android that storage isn't really a problem. The Mate 20 Pro also boasts 128GB of internal storage, but this time, unlike the P20 Pro, the latest Mate sees the reintroduction of support for external memory cards. However, instead of microSD cards, Huawei has gone for a proprietary solution - the NM card, smaller than a microSD, which we've never heard of before. Nevertheless, this will take the 128GB storage up further to 256GB, double that of the Pixel 3 XL. Winner: Mate 20 Pro Price The Google Pixel 3 XL starts at a whopping £869, while the Mate 20 Pro is even more, costing £899. Winner: Pixel 3 XL Verdict If you round up the scores, you'll find both the Mate 20 Pro and the Pixel 3 XL win three rounds each, and tie on two other rounds, meaning the end result is a draw. With a result like this, we'd have to recommend thinking about what it is you're looking for in a smartphone before making a purchase. If storage and battery life are most important to you, then go with Huawei's flagship, but if it's price and display, go with Google's. Either way, both phones offer some super impressive features and you won't be disappointed whichever you opt for. µ

BRITAIN'S LAST chain music retailer, HMV, has gone into administration. No, this isn't deja vu, it's the second time the company has gone under in just six years. Last time, it was rescued by Hilco, a company that specialises in turning around failing companies. But it seems that the change in the way we consume media in the internet age has proved too much, and despite optimistic projections of increased market share, the poor trading environment over Christmas, and forecasts of a further 17 per cent drop in sales in the sector, HMV was just not viable in its current form. The stores will carry on trading whilst a potential buyer is found, and to many peoples' surprise, the company has vowed to honour gift cards, though we'd advise anyone who had one under the tree to get it used quickly as these things can change at any time - a new buyer could reverse the decision, as happened with department store House of Fraser. The fundamental issue is that CDs and DVDs are the solutions to a problem that has ceased to exist. When you can buy or stream anything you want digitally in seconds, the appeal of functional but less romantic formats is diminished. Real collectors flock to independent vinyl sellers for the "big sleeve, big sound" experience. Although HMV has attempted to capitalise on the digital market, with a mail order business, an MP3 download store and adding gadgets such as Bluetooth speakers and headphones to its roster, the prices simply don't add up and many HMV customers were simply using the shop for "showrooming" before buying the device cheaper on the internet. The news comes at the end of a poor year for retail, with the tech sector's biggest casualty being electronics retailer Maplin, which has sinced been revived as a web shop, by Dragon's Den stalwart Peter Jones. As for HMV, it's thought that there is potential to bring it back as a smaller, leaner operation, perhaps with more of the values of its lovablely nerdy sister brand Fopp, which itself was rescued by HMV from administration, and is now at risk along with its parent brand. However, as we've seen in the past, potential isn't everything, and there is still a good chance that this iconic brand will disappear from the high street, with technology holding the smoking gun. μ FURTHER READING

IF WINDOWS XP were human, at 17 it would just be old enough to legally take its driving test and blag its way to getting served in bars. As it's not, it's easier to think of it in dog years, where the venerable operating system is very much at the end of its natural life and on borrowed time living with sentimental owners clinging on to the good times. It's surprisingly stubborn. Netmarketshare reckons that just over four per cent of desktop computer users worldwide are battling away with Windows XP to this day. But it's about to lose a bit more support: the people at Valve have clearly been binge reading those 'new year, new you' pieces and have decided that 2019 is the year when Windows XP and Windows Vista (a relative spring chicken at 11) are officially unsupported for the Steam gaming platform. Frankly, Valve doesn't really need much justification to pull the plug on an OS with the minimum system requirements of a 233Mhz CPU and 64MB RAM, but it gamely does so anyway: "The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 7 and above." According to the most recent Steam survey, this news will frustrate around 0.12 per cent of Steam's user base, which is probably a gamble worth taking. Those XP refuseniks will have to upgrade to a more modern system, like the nine-year-old Windows 7. Although given mainstream support ended here three years ago, any XP user who takes this upgrade path doesn't seem to have learned any lessons from the whole forced upgrade thing. µ

Black Mirror, the TV series written by the smart and gloomy Charlie Brooker, appears to routinely predict and dramatize world news and policies. But instead of merely predicting the future, the newly released “Bandersnatch” could be creating it. Released on Netflix on Dec. 28, “Bandersnatch” charters new territory. Yes, it’s one of the first mainstream attempts at narrative-driven gameplay on a streaming platform. But it’s also potentially the progenitor of a new form of surveillance—one that invades our privacy while wearing the cloak of entertainment. Instead of just passively watching a movie, the viewers (or players) get to choose what the main character does next. Some choices are seemingly innocent—what music to play, what to eat for breakfast—but then quickly moves on to questions about career decisions, mental-health issues, and even whether to kill other characters. All this data is collected by Netflix and stored in a secure database. (Though with so many recent hacks of other companies, it can be hard to feel assured.) Your choices are used to improve the gameplay; those seemingly innocent early decisions (like whether you chose Sugar Puffs or Frosties) impact the narrative much later in the story. Without collecting this information, it can’t send you down your personalized journey choose-your-own-adventure journey. But what happens to your decision data after the credits roll? Netflix acquires a lot of data about its users. This includes information about your viewing habits on the platform, like the programs you choose to watch and how long you watch them for. It uses this data to recommend new shows it thinks you’ll enjoy, as well as to improve its customer service and for marketing purposes. But what if instead of logging how many times you watched Love Actually this holiday season, it’s remembering whether you opted to kill your father in cold blood, or save him? What could Netflix do with that highly sensitive emotional information? “The privacy of Netflix members is a priority for us,” a Netflix spokesperson said in an email. “Documenting choices improves the experience and interactive functionality of Black Mirror: “Bandersnatch.” All interactions with the film and uses of that information are in compliance with our privacy statement.” When reading through Netflix’s privacy statement (and also the statement about its recommendation algorithm), it isn’t clear whether the data of the viewers’ choices will be used outside of the actual game. Privacy policies like these are vague and undetailed because the algorithms change so regularly that it’s impossible to include every single data point in the document. But should data on the shows you choose to binge watch be treated the same as more serious behavioral choices, such as whether commit murder or leap off the edge of a building? If the gameplay data is considered different to the data that Netflix already collects, under the GDPR (an EU data protection regulation), Netflix would have to notify its EU users about the change in data collection. But there’s a chance its privacy policy is broad enough that Netflix doesn’t have to. So what? you might ask. When you play “Bandersnatch,” is it really reflecting your true nature, anyway? Are you choosing to attack your therapist because you have deep-seated anger issues, or is it just for entertainment value? Many decisions lead to dead ends, which means that you have to go back and make a different choice again anyway. Do your choices in the show really reveal that much about you? It matters for three reasons. One is because Netflix has a huge influence over how millions of people get cultural and political information. In September 2018, they had 137.1 million subscribers, all of whom are plugged into the recommendation algorithm. Users are far more likely to watch programs that have been recommended to you, and this in turn changes how you perceive the world. Your decisions in interactive films could have many unintended consequences. If Netflix determined that those who immediately chose to kill a family member in “Bandersnatch” would be more likely to enjoy the film Kill Bill Vol 1, then this data could be used to serve you more violent films. Netflix is planning more interactive content in 2019—and it’s already been running interactive kids’ content for years. This will allow them to gather more instinctive behavioral data on a variety of subjects. What if it started serving you programs celebrating a particular political party because of the choices you made in an interactive White House thriller? Secondly, it’s not hard to imagine that companies that do collect information about you to share with political actors—like YouTube and Facebook—will forage into this media form in the future. The data from personality quizzes have already caused huge ramifications for political elections—so what about interactive gameplay? It offers a new way of understanding users’ personalities, and what they are likely to respond to. The third concern is the most Black Mirror of them all. It’s not inconceivable to imagine that if the government got a hold of your data, it could think you’re someone worthy of future surveillance. Studies from the Oxford Internet Institute show that there is little evidence to say that playing violent video games lead to violent real-life behavior. However, there are still politicians that peddle this narrative. Could Netflix data be used to identify future terrorists or restrict your access to airports? It’s not dissimilar to China’s “social credit system,” where individuals can be judged and punished for not paying bills or jaywalking. Black Mirror’s “Bandersnatch” dissects the idea of free will. But another parallel theme is the erosion of our own real-life privacy. Instead of choosing your own adventure, what if Netflix is choosing for you? Black Mirror could be watching you. And its stories do not generally have a happy ending.

On the heels of Netflix’s big experiment in interactive video, Black Mirror‘s “Bandersnatch,” the streaming giant poached an executive from the video-game industry to be its next chief financial officer. Spencer Neumann, who was CFO of Activision Blizzard—the company behind mega-hits World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Call of Duty—and worked at Walt Disney Company before that, is Netflix’s new financial chief, the company announced on Jan. 2. Neumann joins the company at a pivotal moment. Netflix, which grew from 50 million to around 137 million subscribers in the last four years, has to prove it’s still the streaming king—and keep boosting subscriber growth—amid an onslaught of competing platforms (Quartz member exclusive). Rivals like Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, along with upcoming services from media giants like Disney and AT&T’s WarnerMedia, are coming for Netflix’s viewers. It’s telling that Netflix chose a CFO like Neumann, who has experience with an entertainment company that has legions of loyal fans like Activision Blizzard, where Neumann became CEO in May 2017. Netflix has been self-producing or investing in bigger and higher-profile projects, including films like Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and serial epics like The Witcher, which can require millions in upfront costs and take years to hit the platform. It needs a CFO who knows how to manage those finances—video games, like movies and TV shows, also take years to develop and require plenty of upfront costs. Netflix has been experimenting with projects that draw on video games as well. The choose-your-own-adventure-style Black Mirror film hit the platform on Dec. 28; it has also released interactive shows for kids. And the company is reportedly exploring an interactive adaptation of its hit series Stranger Things. During his time at Disney, Neumann also served as the CFO and executive vice president of global guest experience of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, experience that could prove useful as Netflix explores how to extend its brands beyond the small screen. Neumann replaced Netflix’s longtime CFO, David Wells, who recently departed the company after 14 years. He managed Netflix’s finances during much of its major expansions into streaming video, original programming, and international markets. The company, which spent more than $10 billion on content and marketing last year, was reportedly looking for its next financial leader to be based in the movie mecca of Los Angeles, California, where Netflix has large office and studio spaces. Neumann, who came from Activision Blizzard in Santa Monica, was based there. On Dec. 31., Activision Blizzard announced that Neumann was being fired with cause; Netflix made its official announcement about Neumann’s hire two days later, on Jan. 2. Activision Blizzard alleged that Neumann violated unspecified legal obligations but that they were unrelated to the company’s financial reporting, according to two filings related to the matter. Given the timeline, it’s unlikely that this came as a shock to Netflix.

It wasn’t the best start to the new year for Apple. Right before the closing bell on the first day of trading in the US today (Jan. 2), Apple halted shares to announce that it was cutting its guidance for revenue in the holiday quarter. In November, when it first announced its guidance for the quarter—traditionally its strongest, as consumers around the world buy phones, computers, tablets as gifts—Apple said it expected to generate between $89 billion and $93 billion for the quarter. Today, the company said it expects to generate around $84 billion for the quarter, which would be about $4 billion less than it generated in the same period last year. In a letter to investors, CEO Tim Cook explained the rationale for lowering the company’s guidance. While there were some hurdles that Cook and his team was aware of—such as the fact that its newest phones were shipped earlier than its flagship phones were the year before, foreign exchange headwinds, and having more new products available this holiday quarter than in recent years—but others were unexpected. “While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China,” Cook said in his note. The CEO blames the vast majority of the company’s revenue shortfall on iPhone, Mac, and iPad sales in China, suggesting that the country’s slowing GDP growth, and trade tensions with the US, were the issues. “As the climate of mounting uncertainty weighed on financial markets, the effects appeared to reach consumers as well, with traffic to our retail stores and our channel partners in China declining as the quarter progressed,” he added. Once trading resumed, Apple shares were immediately hit, down about 7% at the time of publishing. Beyond China, iPhone demand was apparently soft around the world. “In some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be,” Cook said. This holiday season, Apple introduced three new phones—the iPhone Xs, Xs Max, and Xr—and it’s possible that consumers were confused by the differences in all three. Analyst reports in December suggested early on that consumers weren’t particularly interested in the Xr, the company’s supposedly “budget” phone, which started at $749. The company was offering trade-in deals, lowering the price of a new phone to as low as $449, soon after it went on sale. Cook also partly blamed Apple’s revenue decline on “some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements”—the company had been selling replacement batteries for $29 (down from $69) after the company had been caught throttling the batteries and performance on older iPhones. It wasn’t all grim news in Cook’s note—he said that outside of the iPhone, revenue for Apple products and services was up 19% over the same period last year—and it had record revenue quarters from certain countries, including the US, Germany, and Korea. Perhaps after 11 years of the iPhone’s dominance, consumers have started to look elsewhere. Or maybe they’re just fed up with having to pay for increasingly expensive Apple phones that don’t offer much more than their competitors do, with waning customer service. Or maybe investors shouldn’t be overly concerned, given that the company still plans to generate $84 billion in a 90-day period selling gadgets, or more than all but 33 US companies generate in a single year.

The US government shutdown has been a disaster for national parks. Due to the now nearly 12-day-old shutdown, the majority of national parks across the country have been forced to temporarily close their main offices. Contingency plans put into place a year ago (pdf) have enabled the parks to keep a small staff on the payroll, and stay open for visitors—but current staffing isn’t enough to handle visitors’ garbage and waste. “It’s a free-for-all,” Dakota Snider, who lives and works in Yosemite Valley, in California’s Yosemite National Park, told the Associated Press. “There is more trash and human waste and disregard for the rules than I’ve seen in my four years living here.” The parks’ skeleton crews have been unable to keep up with visitors, who are flocking to them in part because no one is around to collect entrance fees. (Fees vary, but are typically around $35 per vehicle for popular parks in the West, like Yosemite.) In particular, remaining staff have been unable to clean up restrooms, provide toilet paper, or remove garbage from parks. No official numbers have been released on how much garbage has accumulated in parks, but by Quartz’ calculations, there are roughly 27 tons of garbage that have been brought to Yosemite National Park since the shutdown began. Previous park estimates have suggested that, annually, visitors to Yosemite generate 2,200 tons of garbage, although in spring of 2016, the park launched a program to try to divert 80% of that waste from landfills by 2017 (it’s unclear if that’s been successful). Between 2001 and 2016, there were an average of 118,889 visitors to Yosemite in December and 108,026 in January. Based on those numbers, we can estimate that there were 45,321 visitors over the dates of the shutdown—38,351 people for the 10 shutdown days in December and 6,969 for the two so far in January—and that, on average, each visitor generated about a pound (half a kilogram) of waste per day. That leads to a total of 26.9 tons of garbage. However, given there has been a reported surge of visitors excited about the lack of fees, this number may be an underestimation. And that’s to say nothing of the human waste. Without maintained bathrooms, many visitors have reportedly taken matters into their own hands. In Joshua Tree National Park in California, port-a-potties are getting dangerously full; it closed its campgrounds this afternoon (Jan. 2). Yosemite also officially closed some of its campgrounds and entrances due to human waste and garbage that have become health hazards. “We’re afraid that we’re going to start seeing significant damage to the natural resources in parks and potentially to historic and other cultural artifacts,” John Garder, a senior budget director of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, told the Associated Press. “We’re concerned there’ll be impacts to visitors’ safety.” The House of Representatives, with a newly established Democratic majority, will vote on a bill that would reopen the government on Thursday; however, because it does not include funding for president Trump’s desired wall between the border of the US and Mexico, it may not pass the Republican-controlled Senate. And even if it does, it still needs to be signed by Trump, who has indicated that this is a hill he’s willing to die on.

For all the noise around its internet-savvy population, India’s broadband subscriber base grew at its slowest pace in five years in 2018. Users of fixed and wireless broadband internet grew 44.7% year-on-year, as per data from the sector regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), research firm techARC said in a press release on Dec. 27. “This is the lowest in the past five years (2014 onwards) since a lot of industry and government focus started towards increasing the broadband penetration in the country,” the Gurugram-based company noted. Internet usage in India has skyrocketed in recent years, especially after the country’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, disrupted the telecom market with the launch of Reliance Jio, which offered data at dirt-cheap rates. Within three months of its launch, the upstart drew over 50 million users. Analysts predict Jio will garner over 400 million users by March 2020. But broadband adoption hasn’t kept pace. Growth in India’s broadband subscriber base was much higher in 2016—the year that Jio launched its services—than it is now. Despite the slowing growth, India’s broadband subscriber base did breach the 500 million milestone in 2018. Overall “broadband subscribers have grown at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 43.7% in the past five years taking the total number of subscribers to 525 million,” the report said. TECHARC India’s growing broadband subscriber base. In all of this, the days of fixed broadband are numbered. By the end of 2018, its subscribers are estimated to decline to a mere 17.6 million. “This decline is evident as it is getting difficult to add the new broadband subscribers at the entry segments of users,” said Faisal Kawoosa, founder of techARC. “It would be a herculean task to get next 500 million on board, taking the Indian broadband subscribers to cross (the) one billion mark.” Not making moves Reliance Jio’s Gigafiber offering, a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband service, is perhaps one of the only concerted efforts by a private player to enable “broadbandisation” at the entry level of the market. “The industry, including the supply chain, has to think of more such innovative solutions to enable more people at the entry segments joining the digital ride,” techARC said in its report. It doesn’t help that government initiatives are falling short. For instance, the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund for rural telephony has run into a wall in the northeastern state of Assam and Andhra Pradesh in the south. There, state-owned telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s (BSNL) implementation partner Vihaan Networks Limited has allegedly been using substandard technology to set up nearly 1,900 mobile towers in the region. Moreover, the Narendra Modi government’s flagship project BharatNet has not made good on its promise of providing digital connectivity of all gram panchayats (village councils) in the country by 2019 either. Just under 10% of the project has reached fruition so far. And where the infrastructure is available, there is gross under-utilisation or non-utilisation.

China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft touched down this morning in a crater on the far side of the Moon—a first for space exploration—Chinese state broadcaster CCTV confirmed at noon local time on Thursday (Jan. 3). The manufacturer of the spacecraft also confirmed the successful landing on social platform Weibo (link in Chinese). The lander touched down at 10:26am Beijing time. Chang’e-4 took off on Dec. 8 local time and spent 26 days in space before landing in the Von Kármán crater, a 186-kilometer-wide (110 miles) region, located in an even larger impact crater called the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin that is 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) wide. Although Chang’e-4 reached lunar orbit just days after taking off, the solar-powered aircraft had to wait until sunlight returned the region to land and begin operations. China hinted on Sunday (Dec. 30) that a landing was imminent, after its space agency said the probe was making final preparations for landing. Details of the date and time of the landing were kept under wraps until the last moment, keeping space program trackers, and even scientists at centers that had contributed to the moon mission, guessing until the last moment. State-run media announced the landing earlier today in tweets, which were later deleted, likely because China wanted the first official confirmation of the historic landing to come via the state broadcaster. China hopes its Moon rover and its instruments can add to our knowledge of the kinds of events taking place in the solar system billions of years ago, and carry out experiments on how to sustain life on the Moon. The mission is also hoping to listen for signals from the universe’s early days using a radio antenna on board the Queqiao, the relay communication satellite that’s helping Chang’e-4 talk to scientists on earth. Chang’e-4’s landing is the second significant space advance in 2019 after NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft sent back pictures of Ultima Thule this week from the edge of the solar system, the farthest object ever explored, some 4 billion miles from the Sun. Soon after the news was confirmed, congratulations started pouring in. Martin Wieser, of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, which developed an instrument that will investigate how solar wind interacts with the lunar surface, called the landing a “great step,” but noted that tricky hours lie ahead, as the lander deploys its rover and sets up instruments. “The challenges are not over yet: now all systems on the lander and rover need to be commissioned on the surface and it will take a while until we will get the first science data,” Wieser told Quartz. “But with the successful landing we are very confident that we will get there!” Philip Stooke, an associate physics and astronomy professor at Canada’s Western University who studies planetary mapping, said he was looking forward to seeing the rover drive on the Moon. “This is a great achievement and a way for China to show the world what it can do,” he said. China’s next step is to launch Chang’e-5 to get samples from the Moon’s near side later this year. China’s ultimate goal is to send humans back to the Moon, a goal it could probably achieve a little over a decade from now, according to Brian Harvey, author of China In Space, a history of China’s space program. In an email to Quartz, Harvey called today’s landing “a daring mission that required the highest levels of engineering skill,” noting ahead of the confirmation, “This is the first time that the Chinese space program has done something that no other country has done before.” This story was updated Jan. 3 with additional commentary on the landing.

Media and social media will be major battlegrounds for political parties in the run-up to the 2019 general elections in India. Prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is extremely resource-rich and tech-savvy in both conventional media advertising and on social media. But the largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress, which won three crucial state elections last month, may be catching up. The Congress’s digital game in particular has stepped up over the past two years or so, with party president Rahul Gandhi, by some metrics, giving Modi a run for his money on Twitter. Meanwhile, fake news, which has sometimes even led to mob violence and lynchings, dogs both conventional and social media. To better understand where media-related issues might be headed from here, a history lesson is in order. Media’s Shifting Terrain: Five Years that Transformed the Way India Communicates is a new book by Pamela Philipose, a journalist and researcher, who is also the public editor for the digital news outlet The Wire. In the book, Philipose discusses key moments for Indian media and social media that occurred between 2010 and 2015. Philipose spoke to Quartz about her book, as well as other media-related issues that promise to be crucial in the upcoming general election. Edited excerpts: Your book focuses on events from 2010 through 2015. Why did you write about this time period? Around 2010, the rest of the world was emerging from the 2008 recession, which had led to incomes declining and media industries suffering. But in India, things were gung-ho. The next year, the country saw the India Against Corruption movement, which showed that mass mobilisations were now possible in ways that were not possible even five years earlier, because of social media. There was a melding of content across platforms; mainstream media was forced to acknowledge social media by encouraging their own readers to connect with them online, to retain their readership or viewership. Other events—the 2012 gang rape of Jyoti Singh in Delhi, the 2014 general election, and the 2015 Delhi state elections—were also crucial moments for media in this five-year period, which I call the “mediatised half-decade.” How did Modi develop his style of media management? Even when Modi started his career as an RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) pracharak (worker) in Gujarat (in the late 1970s), he clearly understood the role media plays in political projection. When organising events, he’d ensure that journalists knew the day’s programme ahead of time and that they had the resources to send out a copy. The BJP (in 1998) made him the general secretary of the party in Delhi, shifting him from Gujarat because he was such an ambitious man that he was a thorn of the side of the then chief minister (Keshubhai Patel). In Delhi, he had the opportunity to interact with national media, and he made full use of it. But after the 2002 riots in Gujarat, national media descended on the state to raise questions about his conduct in managing the violence, and Modi became resentful. He said national media was giving him a bad name. So he learned to develop media that accepted him, right or wrong. He cultivated them, made himself accessible to them. He got many corporates—large media owners—on his side. Modi’s type of governance appeals to corporates because it means they have a one-person channel to policymaking. How does Modi use social media? Modi has always been tech-savvy; he used the internet in its early days, and was one of the first politicians to get on Facebook and Twitter. He would make friends with people who had vast followings, like (actor) Rajinikanth or (novelist) Chetan Bhagat. He would greet Chetan Bhagat on his birthday on Twitter, getting Bhagat’s fans on board. Modi’s usage of social media allows him to put out the messages he wants to, without submitting himself to scrutiny. The fact that we have not had a press conference from him (since he became prime minister) indicates that he has seen value in persisting with this model of communication. How has fake news and misinformation in media changed over the years, and do you think it is worse now than in the past? Fake news is as old as the hills. Many classic thinkers—Machiavelli, Chanakya—wrote about the importance of using information like a tool. In Nazi Germany, radios were placed in shop fronts and the information that came out of them was homogenised material that told you how great the Führer was. The Rwandan genocide was fuelled in part by the constant attack on Tutsis on the radio. And in India, the Muzaffarnagar riots (in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in 2013) were based totally on fake news. But now, it is possible to influence people with information in real time, and in ways that of course Chanakya couldn’t even imagine. For instance, when newspapers report on cow slaughter and gau raksha (cow protection) networks, they put out information like: “20 kilos of meat were transported.” They might add that there’s no way of checking what type of meat that is, but even something like that is enough to actually generate a lot of interest and then bring together a critical mass of people who take action into their own hands. What trends do you expect to see during the 2019 general election? Modi made great efforts to reach young voters in 2014, and I think the young cohort will be targeted this time too. Young millennials, born in the 2000s, will be able to vote in this election for the first time, and there’s a huge number of them. I think we will see more polarisation among voters, and more attempts to use media to polarise. In the (2017) Uttar Pradesh state assembly election, WhatsApp groups were a large part of campaign machinery. At every level, party workers could activate people, who in turn activated a number of people within their neighbourhood. So there will be point people who will be given the responsibility of bringing people to booths and posting on WhatsApp groups. We’re also going to see a lot more use of Instagram and other visual platforms. Images jump across literacy barriers. And young people don’t like to read too much, so if you can have a nice video or meme, it matters much more than three lines of text. What do you expect mainstream media will do? I think they will stick with Modi as their best bet. The corporates who own the media will want their outlets to continue more or less along the editorial lines that they have already adopted. There may be some independent initiatives, but even those will have to hedge their bets. Meanwhile, the Congress, because of its vote base, will have to go slow on seeming gung ho about corporate India. It’s not as if they won’t be gung ho—if you look at their record, they’re as gung ho as the BJP in some ways. But they cannot project themselves in quite the same way. Sign up for the Quartz Obsession email Enter your email Sign me up Stay updated about Quartz products and events.

Finally there’s some good news for the Indian cryptocurrency ecosystem—and this one’s from a global financial body. An inter-governmental body that makes recommendations about the health of the world economy has said that virtual currencies are not a threat. The observation was made by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), which counts over 20 countries as its members, including the US, UK, China, and India. The assessment came to light after India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), quoted the agency in a report released last week. ”The FSB has undertaken a review of the financial stability risks posed by the rapid growth of crypto-assets. Its initial assessment is that crypto-assets do not pose risks to global financial stability currently,” the RBI report said. Nevertheless, the central bank also added a note of caution as it has adopted a wait-and-watch policy towards crypto assets. “The market continues to evolve rapidly, however, and this initial assessment could change if crypto-assets were to become more widely used or interconnected with the core of the regulated financial system,” the RBI noted. The FSB was established in 2009 by finance ministers and central bankers from G-20 nations in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Even though the recommendations of the FSB are not legally binding on member countries, they are typically adhered to, so as to ensure that the international standards are maintained. Its latest observation on cryptocurrency, therefore, comes as a ray of hope for the battered global crypto-ecosystem. Sinking prices and unfavourable regulations have hit the industry in several geographies, including India. Till now, neither India’s central bank nor prime minister Narendra Modi’s government have taken a favourable stance. Since July 2018, on the RBI’s behest, lenders have been banned from pursuing any banking relationship with the cryptocurrency exchanges and traders. Meanwhile, the government has been studying virtual currencies for nearly two years now but hasn’t come out with any specific regulations on it, yet. Last week, the Indian parliament was also informed that the government is still studying the issue and has not even set a deadline for coming out with specific norms for the ecosystem. The Indian cryptocurrency exchanges and traders have been demanding clarity in regulations, as they prefer that to an outright clampdown. “Sometimes, no regulation is not bad news. It probably means that the government of India does not see cryptocurrencies as a matter of immediate concern, or something that needs to be regulated right away. This at least means that fears of a ban are not imminent,” said Nischal Shetty, CEO of WazirX, an Indian cryptocurrency exchange. Certain other FSB member countries, such as the US, are also yet to come out with draft regulations on cryptocurrencies, which may end up setting a precedent for the rest. “The US has been deliberating on digital currencies for the last 12-18 months and for 2019 the (market regulator) Securities and Exchange Commission has mentioned digital assets as a priority. It is expected that other countries including India will also take a cue from the US and will come out with concrete laws after it,” added Shetty.

India’s urban population is growing. More than 50% of the country’s population is forecast to be living in cities by 2030. This is a major challenge for government because the country’s cities lack the infrastructure (affordable housing, roads) and basic services (sanitation, water, health care) for existing inhabitants, let alone the influx of people over the next decade. Globally, one in eight people live in slums where they face issues of durable housing, access to safe drinking water and toilets, and insecure tenure. In India, one in every six city residents lives in a slum. However, estimates of slum populations differ widely in many Indian cities due to differences in the counting criteria. For example, in cities like Mumbai and Delhi, it’s estimated more than 50% of the population live in slums, but the 2011 Indian census put the figures at 41.3% and 14.6% respectively. Launching the national Smart Cities Mission in 2016, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said: “…if anything has the potential to mitigate poverty it is our cities.” He said the mission, which has a target of 100 smart cities, aims to ensure access to basic services for the people. This includes houses for the urban poor. The program aims to fulfill the aspirations and needs of the citizens through comprehensive development of institutional, physical, social, and economic infrastructure. This comprehensive development would also ensure increased public participation, Modi said. SUJEET KUMAR, AUTHOR PROVIDED Villagers migrated to the Danapur Block slum after the Ganga river flooded. Smart city plan has a dark side In one of the 100 cities selected for the Smart City Mission, Patna (Bihar), I witnessed the flip side of the smart city. Patna, the state capital of Bihar, has a rich history, but 63% of its population lives in slums. And 93% of them are from the historically oppressed “scheduled castes” and “other backward castes” (based on data collected in 42 slums). SUJEET KUMAR, AUTHOR PROVIDED Demolished homes at Meena Bazar. The city administration often demolishes slums without following due process of law in order to seize the land in the name of beautification and development of Patna. In slums like Meena Bazar (near the famous Nalanda Medical College Hospital) and Amu Kuda Basti (near Patna Airport) people have been living there for generations in houses often partially funded by government housing projects. These have been bulldozed. SUJEET KUMAR, AUTHOR PROVIDED Riot police are on hand when slum dwellers’ homes are demolished at Amu Kuda Basti. The city administration usually makes ad-hoc loudspeaker announcements before bulldozing these settlements. A massive police presence and riot vehicles are on hand in case residents protest the demolitions. They use derogatory language and forcefully enter houses and thrash male members, say women in Amu Kuda Basti. The government could have given them more time or relocated them elsewhere in the city, rather than just bulldozing their houses, which they had built with hard-earned money, the slum dwellers said. SUJEET KUMAR, AUTHOR PROVIDED Residents of slums like Amu Kuda Basti say houses they built with their own hard-earned money are being demolished with little notice. There is apparently reason to smash these homes. There always is. The usual arguments for demolition include: the beautification of the city, construction of a government building or enterprise, extension of the airport, crime locations, governance, illegality, encroachment etc. The state says demolitions of such slums are necessary for the development of the city. In 2011, the state proposed a slum policy to relocate slum dwellers who had lived in the city for generations to the outskirts in a plan to develop Patna and make it a smart city, says Kishori Das, an advocate for the rights of slum dwellers for years. Faced with widespread protests, the state deferred the policy, but it is silently applying it on the ground, he said. Who speaks for the marginalised poor? SUJEET KUMAR, AUTHOR PROVIDED These two leaders from Meena Bazar are among 84 community representatives, elected and non-elected, interviewed by the author. Local and mainstream media are not reporting these demolitions and forced evictions, especially when it happens in non-metro cities like Patna. Civil society and advocacy NGOs also take little notice of these frequent demolitions, probably due to threats to life and, if not, then to co-option by the state. The roles of the ruling party and opposition are also dubious. Bihar has been ruled by leaders who attracted votes by campaigning on issues of poverty, caste and social justice for the past three decades. In the early 1990s, the prominent leader Lalu Prasad Yadav mobilised the poor and the oppressed caste groups under the umbrella of “Vikas nahin, samman chahiye” (we want dignity, not development). The present chief minister, Nitish Kumar, also known as Sushaasan Babu (good governance man), adopted the slogan “Nyay ke saath vikas” (development with justice). However, the frequent injustices suffered by the urban poor negate the political commitment. These actions are also in conflict with the motto of the Indian constitution, which frames justice as a balancing wheel between the haves and have-nots. SUJEET KUMAR, AUTHOR PROVIDED Promises of social justice ring hollow for residents of bulldozed communities like Amu Kuda Basti. These challenges are not limited to one city. In the name of smart and developed cities, the government is not only taking over urban land where millions of the poor have lived for decades but is also acquiring fertile land and violating the constitutional rights of farmers, tribes, and other indigenous groups in various cities. These reports of struggle and forced evictions contradict the statements by Modi when he said smart cities development would strictly follow large-scale public participation in preparing these plans. Such demolitions reveal a dark side to making Indian cities smart and cast serious doubt on claimed government commitment to the urban poor. These actions hardly live up to the idea of the rights of the poor. It became more challenging when the head of the biggest democracy in the world denounces those who speak up for the poor, oppressed and voiceless as “urban Naxals.” In the words of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” For India, this means the urban poor need help both from political parties and civil society so that their voice finds expression and their demands and concerns are heard and considered in public policy.

2018 was not a great year for tech startup funding in India—except for the unicorns (startups valued at over $1 billion or Rs7,040 crore). These firms raised around $10.5 billion last year, 5% lower than the $11.2 billion raised in 2017, according to startup data platform, Tracxn. The number of funding rounds also fell to 924 in 2018 from 1,161 a year ago. The first half of 2018 was particularly bad with $3.6 billion invested over 411 deals—the same period in the previous year saw $5.6 billion pour in from 571 deals. Overall, investors stayed away given the uncertainty around angel tax in India. Some were put off by “unrealistic valuations” created during the funding frenzy between 2014 and 2016. Early-stage funding during January-June 2018 declined to $137.8 million as compared to $200 million in the same period a year ago. And seed investment rounds fell 22% year-on-year to 870 during the entire year, Tracxn data show. “Investments depend really on market sentiment. Boom and bust cycles are real, and investment closely follows it,” Kunal Shah, founder of FreeCharge and an angel investor, told Quartz in an interview in November 2018. While the trend might seem disheartening in the near-term, Avnish Bajaj, managing director of venture capital firm Matrix Partners, said such cycles are important for creative disruption. “Entrepreneurs come up with new ideas and those ideas have limited validation until they prove it, and they create excitement around it. Without that excitement, capital wouldn’t follow, and without capital, one wouldn’t know which ideas will work,” he told Quartz in December 2018. The good times Towards the second half of 2017, though, there was some excitement in the industry as large companies made some mega announcements. This was mainly the result of improved investor sentiment following the acquisition of Flipkart. In May, the world’s largest retailer, Walmart, said it was acquiring India’s biggest homegrown e-commerce firm for an eye-popping $16 billion. This is the world’s largest e-commerce acquisition so far. “The Flipkart-Walmart deal has definitely given a boost to investor confidence. There is now more money flowing into worthy startups,” said Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, founder of Venture Catalysts. There were 15 large deals (between $100 million and $500 million) in 2018, as compared to just nine in 2017, according to Tracxn. Here are some of the big-ticket funding rounds that followed Flipkart’s acquisition: Company Investors Amount (in $ million) OYO Rooms Lightspeed Venture Partners; Sequoia Capital; Greenoaks; SoftBank Group 800 Paytm Mall Alibaba Group; SoftBank Group 453 Byju’s Classes CPP Investment Board; Naspers; General Atlantic 400 BigBasket Alibaba Group; The Abraaj Group; IFC; Sands Capital; Bessemer Venture Partners; Trifecta Capital 300 Paytm Berkshire Hathaway 300 ReNew Power Ventures CPP Investment Board 247 Udaan DST Global; Lightspeed Venture Partners 225 Swiggy DST Global; Coatue; Naspers; Meituan 210 Zomato Ant Financial 210 Policybazaar Temasek; Tiger Global Management; SoftBank Investment Advisers; Info Edge 206 Zomato Ant Financial 152 GreyOrange Mithril; Blume Ventures; Mitsubishi Corporation 140 Pine labs Temasek; PayPal 125 Curefit Kalaari Capital; Accel Partners; Oaktree Capital Management; Chiratae Ventures; IDG ventures 120 Gaana Tencent; Times Internet 115 OYO Rooms Grab 105 Book My Show TPG; Stripes Group; Network18; SAIF Partners; Accel Partners; Bigtree Entertainment 100 CarDekho Sequoia Capital; Hillhouse Capital Group 100 Swiggy Naspers; Meituan 100 Dream11 Tencent; Kalaari Capital; Multiples Equity; Think Investments 100 Funding was spread across segments in 2018. However, business-to-consumer firms continued to get a major chunk of the money: Sector # of Rounds Amount ($ million) Consumer 342 5,612 Retail 147 2,099 Food 88 1,647 FinTech 147 1,442 Enterprise Applications 182 1,219 Auto 64 673 HealthTech 87 593 EdTech 57 576 Energy 32 520 Artificial Intelligence 92 422 Mobile 17 377 Life Sciences 43 342 Technology 42 250 Media & Entertainment 29 202 Agriculture 28 184 Enterprise Infrastructure 26 160 Internet of Things 21 100 AdTech 9 33 Gaming 5 29 While the investment climate improved towards the end of 2018, investors are even now betting only on a few startups and not spreading thinly across too many deals. “The valuations today are much higher than the 2015 levels, but I think today the valuations are much more justified. In 2015 there were the big three–Paytm, Flipkart, and Ola. Today it has become the big 15 or 20, including OYO, Swiggy, and others. Therefore, the same amount is going to the 15-20 large companies, as compared to the same capital going to just three, which is a more stable way to be,” Bajaj said. Green shoots 2018 was also the year when India churned out unicorns at an unprecedented rate—eight of them. These include food-tech firms Zomato and Swiggy, ed-tech startup Byju’s, hospitality venture OYO, and e-commerce player Paytm Mall, among others. The pace of new startup launches was also brisk. The country added over 1,200 startups in January-September 2018, taking the total number of such companies to over 7,200. This means India continues to be the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem after the US and the UK. Now that the market has matured, investors expect this momentum to continue in 2019. “I think, we will see a pick-up in activity in the middle segment where we have seen less funding till now. The late stage will continue at the same pace or slow down a bit. The early stage has been buoyant always,” Bajaj said. In 2019, investments in e-commerce are expected to revive, along with B2B and software-as-a-service. However, India is still behind in terms of monetisation, according to Matrix’s Bajaj, but it has begun to stabilise. “Overall, we are at the beginning of a very strong 10-15 year run in the Indian venture and startup ecosystem,” Bajaj said. The regulatory framework will continue to evolve at its own pace, to keep up with new innovations and ideas that startups come up with. “But if it takes too much time to catch up, the period of limbo in between can be one of the largest challenges that startups face,” Murali Talasila, partner & innovation leader at PwC, said. Enjoy this content in the new Quartz app Get the app

There is way for immigrants awaiting permanent US residency to avoid the excruciating delay—sometimes of up to 150 years. The otherwise cumbersome process can be hastened by simply eliminating country quotas, according to a report published on Dec. 21, 2018, by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), an independent research wing of the US Congress. Indians face the worst backlog when it comes to getting a green card, thanks to a 7%-per-country cap on allocations each year. Of the 395,025 approved employment-based immigrant petitions pending as of April 20, 2018, Indian nationals comprise 306,601. That means nearly 80% of those waiting for green cards under an employment-based preference category are Indians, data from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) show. This delay in getting permanent residency has for years subjected families to uncertainty and instability, often even tearing them apart. Lifting the cap Doing away with the country-cap would not only help fast-track green card allocations but it would also help US-based employers hire the most suitable foreign talent. “…eliminating the per-country ceiling would increase the flow of high-skilled immigrants from countries such as India and China, who are often employed in the US technology sector, without increasing the total annual admission of employment-based LPRs (Legal Permanent Residency),” CRS said. Workers from abroad are already crucial to fixing the skills crunch plaguing Silicon Valley. While less than 1% of all US jobs go to foreign workers, more than 12% of tech jobs do. But currently, the quota system “discriminates against some foreign workers based on their country of origin, a characteristic they contend has little bearing on workers’ labor market contributions,” William A Kandel, CRS’s immigration policy analyst, wrote. With no cap, “a handful of countries could conceivably dominate employment-based immigration, possibly benefitting certain industries that employ foreign workers from those countries, at the expense of foreign workers from other countries and other industries that might employ them,” Kandel added. In the absence of a level playing field that rewards merit above all else, skilled workers “may decide to start their careers and conduct entrepreneurial activities in other countries where the equivalent of LPR status is more quickly obtained,” the report warned. Already, Indian entrepreneurs and tech workers are turning to Canada over the US. In fact, even college students from the country have developed a liking for the Great White North as opposed to blindly chasing the American dream at US universities. However, the Trump administration is refraining from taking this step, citing diversity concerns. “It (removing the cap) would fix the problem more or less for people from India. Their wait times would go down,” USCIS director Lee Francis Cissna said on Aug. 15. “But as a result, most of the flow of immigrants who come through employment visas would be from India almost exclusively for many years…That’s an issue.” Detractors also point to unfair practices under the H-1B visa programme, which allows specialty workers to temporarily live and work in the US for up to six years, to drive their point home. “Some observers criticise the H-1B visa as exploitative of foreign workers, mostly from India, because once sponsored for employment-based LPR status, workers are unable to change employers, leaving them vulnerable to exploitative practices,” the report said. Indians comprise three-fourths of all H-1B visa recipients.

NASA's New Horizons team has released the promised first images from its history-making flyby of (486958) 2014 MU69. "The snapshots, captured from as close at 17,000 miles away, show that the 21-mile-long Kuiper Belt object is a 'contract binary' where two spheres slowly collided and fused with each other," reports Engadget. "The two may have linked up '99 percent of the way' to the start of the Solar System, Johns Hopkins University APL said." From the report: Capturing a true representation of 2014 MU69 is difficult, at least with the initial batch of pictures. There's a visible light camera onboard the New Horizons Probe (shown on the left), but the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (center) is much sharper. To create an accurate image (on the right), scientists had to produce a composite. Higher-resolution pictures and additional scientific data will keep flowing over the "next weeks and months," the New Horizons team said.

State news agency Xinhua reports that China has successfully landed its Chang'e 4 spacecraft on the far side of the moon on Thursday morning, Beijing time, becoming the first country in history to touch the lunar surface unseen by those on Earth. CNBC reports: The Chang'e 4 mission launched in early December. It took the spacecraft three days to travel to the moon, where it spent the last few weeks in orbit preparing for touch down on the Von Karman crater. The crater is a relatively flat spot on the moon's far side. "China's Chang'e-4 probe softlands on Moon's far side," the state news agency tweeted on Thursday. Citing the China National Space Administration, Xinhua said the space probe, made up of a lander and a rover, "landed at the preselected landing area on the far side of the moon at 10:26 a.m. Beijing Time." Landing on the far side is a technical challenge, as there is no direct way to communicate with the spacecraft as it nears its target. China put a relay satellite in orbit around the moon in May to overcome that communication challenge. The far side of the moon has been seen and mapped before, even by astronauts of the Apollo missions. But the successful landing of Chang'e 4 represents the first time any spacecraft has touched down on the moon's far side.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple CEO Tim Cook published a letter to investors today warning of weaker than expected first-quarter earnings, citing "fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated." The weakened demand came primarily from China, although Cook notes that "in some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be." In his letter, Cook offers several explanations for the lower earnings guidance: earlier launch timing of the iPhone XS and XS Max compared to the iPhone X, the strength of the US dollar, supply constraints due to the number of new products Apple released in the fall, and overall economic weakness in some markets. But the core issue remains simple: people just aren't buying as many new iPhones as Apple hoped. All in all, Apple's revised Q1 guidance forecast is dropping by up to $9 billion in revenue compared to its original estimate.

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new neurostimulator that can listen to and stimulate electric current in the brain at the same time, potentially delivering fine-tuned treatments for patients with diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson's. Science Daily reports: The device, named the WAND, works like a "pacemaker for the brain," monitoring the brain's electrical activity and delivering electrical stimulation if it detects something amiss. These devices can be extremely effective at preventing debilitating tremors or seizures in patients with a variety of neurological conditions. But the electrical signatures that precede a seizure or tremor can be extremely subtle, and the frequency and strength of electrical stimulation required to prevent them is equally touchy. It can take years of small adjustments by doctors before the devices provide optimal treatment. WAND, which stands for wireless artifact-free neuromodulation device, is both wireless and autonomous, meaning that once it learns to recognize the signs of tremor or seizure, it can adjust the stimulation parameters on its own to prevent the unwanted movements. And because it is closed-loop -- meaning it can stimulate and record simultaneously -- it can adjust these parameters in real-time. WAND can record electrical activity over 128 channels, or from 128 points in the brain, compared to eight channels in other closed-loop systems. To demonstrate the device, the team used WAND to recognize and delay specific arm movements in rhesus macaques. The device is described in a study that appeared in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today thanked Congress for preventing the U.S. government from enforcing net neutrality rules. "The Pai-led Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules, but the repeal could have been reversed by Congress if it acted before the end of its session," reports Ars Technica. "Democrats won a vote to reverse the repeal in the Senate but weren't able to get enough votes in the House of Representatives before time ran out." From the report: "I'm pleased that a strong bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives declined to reinstate heavy-handed Internet regulation," Pai said in a statement marking the deadline passage today. Pai claimed that broadband speed improvements and new fiber deployments in 2018 occurred because of his net neutrality repeal -- although speeds and fiber deployment also went in the right direction while net neutrality rules were in place. "Over the past year, the Internet has remained free and open," Pai said, adding that "the FCC's light-touch approach is working." Pai didn't mention a recent case in which CenturyLink temporarily blocked its customers' Internet access in order to show an ad or a recent research report accusing Sprint of throttling Skype (which Sprint denies).

In what is being referred to as CastHack, hackers j3ws3r and HackerGiraffe are promoting Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg by forcing TVs to display a message encouraging people to subscribe to his YouTube channel. "The hack takes advantage of a router setting that makes smart devices, like Chromecasts and Google Homes, publicly viewable on the internet," reports The Verge. "The attackers are then able to gain control of the devices and broadcast videos on a connected TV." From the report: A website for the attack claims to count the number of TVs forced to show the PewDiePie message and currently says more than 3,000 have been affected. While it's not clear that this is an accurate number (it has reset several times), a number of people posted on Reddit that the video had appeared on their TV. Google tells The Verge it has received reports from people who had "an unauthorized video played on their TVs via a Chromecast device," but said the issue was the result of router settings. Both HackerGiraffe and Google told The Verge the best way for affected users to fix the issue is to turn off Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) on their routers. The two hackers said they were behind a hack in November that forced printers around the world to print out sheets of paper telling people to subscribe to PewDiePie.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Authorities in Iran are preparing to block access to Instagram, extending their crackdown on social media to the only major platform still freely available. The National Cyberspace Council approved steps toward blocking the service, Javad Javidnia, deputy for cyberspace affairs at the public prosecutor's office, was cited as saying by the semi-official Donya-e Eqtesad newspaper. Instagram would join Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Telegram in being banned in the Islamic Republic, ostensibly for reasons of national security. Despite the restrictions, Iranians including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif continue to use the services, which are widely accessible via proxy servers. Rouhani's verified Twitter account has over 800,000 followers. Javidnia said efforts to filter Instagram hadn't worked. While judicial and political officials involved were yet to reach a consensus on barring the site, the prosecutor can take a unilateral decision to do so, he said.

Tesla is cutting its car prices in the United States by $2,000 to combat a cut in a federal tax credit for its buyers. "Tesla triggered the tax credit phase-out in July when it became the first car maker in the United States to sell more than 200,000 plug-in vehicles," reports CNN. "The government designed the credit to be phased out for each automaker once it reaches that milestone." From the report: Before that benchmark, Tesla buyers were entitled to a tax credit of $7,500 for purchasing a plug-in electric car. But as of January 1, Tesla buyers will only get half that credit, or $3,750, for the next six months. The credit falls to $1,875 in July, and then disappears in 2020. The tax credit phase-out comes just as Tesla was preparing to sell a $35,000 version of its Model 3 sedan, the first time it will be taking aim at the price-conscious mass market. CEO Elon Musk said in an interview on "60 Minutes" that he expects the lower-priced version of the Model 3 to be available in five to six months. Tesla also reported strong production and sales for the just completed fourth quarter. Total sales were up 8% and Model 3 sales were up even more, about 13%, to 63,150 vehicles. That works out to an average of about 4,900 Model 3s per week in the quarter, putting it in range of its goal of 5,000 Model 3's a week.

A federal district court has ruled that the state of Oregon illegally infringed on a man's First Amendment rights for fining him $500 because he wrote "I am an engineer" in a 2014 email to the state's Engineering Board. The court ruled that the provision in the law he broke is unconstitutional, which opens the door for people in the state to legally call themselves "engineers." Motherboard reports: This dystopian saga dates back to 2013, when Mats Jarlstrom's wife, while driving, was caught by a red light camera near their home in Beaverton, Oregon. Rather than pay the red light camera fine, Jarlstrom, an electrical engineer, spent months researching the specifics of yellow light timing and red light cameras, and learned that his wife had likely been ticketed for running a yellow light. Jarlstrom began sharing his findings on his personal website, at conferences, and even got featured on 60 Minutes. He also wrote several emails to the Oregon Board of Engineers explaining what he had found. In the email, he noted that he was an "engineer." Rather than looking into whether traffic light timing should be changed, however, the board sent Jarlstrom a warning -- and then a $500 fine for the crime of "practicing engineering without being registered." Jarlstrom had violated one of Oregon's "Title Laws," which states that "no persons may ... hold themselves out as an 'engineer'" unless they are an "individual who is registered in this state and holds a valid certificate to practice engineering in this state." Jarlstrom has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and spent his career working in electronics, but wasn't board certified. He sued the state's engineering board and, last week, a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Oregon ruled that the state's law is unconstitutional. The judge wrote: "The statutes prohibit truthfully describing oneself as an 'engineer,' in any context. This restriction clearly controls and suppresses protected speech, and enforcement of the statute against protected speech is not a hypothetical threat. The term 'engineer,' standing alone, is neither actually nor inherently misleading. Courts have long recognized that the term 'engineer' has a generic meaning separate from 'professional engineer' and that the term has enjoyed 'widespread usage in job titles in our society to describe positions which require no professional training.'" "The judge ordered that the word 'engineer' be struck from Oregon's law, which is 'substantially overbroad in violation of the First Amendment' and specifically noted that Jarlstrom may describe himself publicly and privately using the word 'engineer' and that he may continue to talk about traffic light timing publicly," reports Motherboard.