Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Health insurance start-up Oscar hedges against Obamacare
 Oscar has tried to disrupt health insurance with a focus on customer experience and technology, but success has been mixed. As the company changes tack, what does the future of a next-gen US health insurer look like?

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Oscar has raised more than $700M, with the aim of disrupting health insurance by building a direct relationship with customers.

In simple terms, the company’s goal has been to put a human face on private health insurance. It aims to make its customers love health insurance — as opposed to seeing it as a necessary evil — and put Oscar at the center of people’s health and wellness needs.

The company has weathered its share of challenges while burning through hundreds of millions of dollars: Oscar has struggled to find its footing in the US healthcare market for individual coverage, and has faced an uphill battle in assembling a network of doctors and hospitals.

As the company moves into its fifth year of operation, Oscar’s strategy is beginning to take a new shape.

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Our analysis shows Oscar is slowly managing to contain its costs by integrating with hospitals, bringing key functions like claims processing in-house, and improving the health of its customers.

The biggest risk to Oscar remains the uncertainty surrounding the health insurance marketplaces known as exchanges, which are operated by the states. The exchanges were the pillar of Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, which sought to bring coverage to millions of Americans who did not have health insurance through their employers.

Health insurers including Oscar have found it difficult to eke out a profit from plans they offer on the highly regulated exchanges. At the same time, the current US administration is hostile to the Affordable Care Act and is taking steps to undermine it through legislation and regulatory tweaks.

In this landscape, Oscar has clearly begun to hedge against its former focus on individual plans and the exchanges.

Oscar has begun moving away from Obamacare in two ways: by integrating more directly with doctors and hospitals, and also by beginning to offer group plans through employers.

Meanwhile, it has also doubled down in care services, significantly expanding telemedicine and concierge teams as well as launching its own primary care clinics.

But while Oscar is beginning to control its costs and improve its tech and experience, will it be enough to win out against existing incumbents and bring the company to profitability? And will its strategy of tight integration with doctors and hospitals, while limiting the number of in-network providers, be appealing enough to consumers?

We examine Oscar’s strategy, numbers, partnerships, and future in this analysis using CB Insights data.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Enough of an Edge? Oscar’s Focus on Tech and Customer Experience

When Oscar began rolling out its product in 2014, the company touted simplicity above all else. Josh Kushner (one of the co-founders) said in 2014:

“Our ethos and mission is to create a good consumer experience. We wanted to create an experience like having a doctor in the family … The existing players don’t care about satisfying the customer.”

Competing on scale, price, and distribution was always going to be difficult due to the size of incumbents. However, Oscar saw its edge in customer satisfaction, where the health insurance industry as a whole has an ultra-low net promoter score (NPS) of 12 out of 100.

(NPS is a measure of how many customers would recommend a product or service to friends. For context, companies like Apple boast NPS scores of 70 or more.)

Oscar, unlike its peers, prioritized customer experience, brand, and simplicity. It outlined its rules for simplicity in a 2014 deck (excerpted below):

The same year, Oscar filed a patent for “Modeling Healthcare Costs” that showed preliminary views of the company’s user interface and experience. Again, this demonstrated its focus on simplicity, but also on price transparency. An oft-cited complaint against health insurers are their confusing statements, with murky information around reimbursements and payouts. Oscar’s UI sought to address that.

Oscar Mobile

Since then the company has maintained this focus on the customer experience. In its latest app overhaul, the company emphasized the fact that limiting options actually improves functionality and increases usage.

From the beginning, Oscar has highlighted its high-touch services, including telemedicine and “Ask your concierge,” a health insurance advice team. Oscar dedicates a team of 3 concierges and a nurse to each individual to help answer health questions and guide patients through the healthcare system.

The company sees this high-touch model as a way of gaining a competitive edge, stating 35% of all first-time doctor visits for members go through concierge teams. Oscar aims to be a patient’s first touch point with the healthcare system, as opposed to an afterthought — and is doubling down on this intiative, as we talk about later.

One recent addition to the Oscar home page is a step count tracker. Notably, Oscar gives up to $240/year to members that hit step tracking goals, boosting the company’s relationship with clients while simultaneously encouraging them to be more active.

The tracker also gives members a reason to visit the app more regularly, encouraging user engagement and allowing Oscar to remind its consumers of the insurance brand, even when they’re not seeking healthcare. Oscar claims a third of its total members used the app in September 2017.

Oscar announced its step-tracking reimbursement as one of its differentiators in partnership with Misfit Wearables in 2014. Today Oscar tracks steps using an assortment of step-tracking wearables as well as Apple’s built-in step tracker in the iPhone and Google Fit on Android.

Oscar has a high satisfaction rate for its app, receiving relatively high ratings, especially compared to competitors. While Oscar has an average app rating above a 4.0 since last August, UnitedHealth and Anthem’s were 1.9 and 1.5, respectively, during that time period.

Oscar Onboarding

Even beyond its app, Oscar boasts streamlined processes. Oscar’s online onboarding and price quote tools ask easy-to-answer, straightforward questions:

My zip code is _______ I’d like to cover _______ (yourself or dependents) I’m ______ years old I make $_________ with __ people in my tax household Tell us about your health and we’ll recommend a plan for you. Your answers will have no impact on rates. (see below)

Following the questionnaire, Oscar shows a selection of plans and their details (benefits, rates, etc.). Notably, everything within this onboarding process remains within Oscar’s website, in contrast with several other major insurers — like Aetna or UnitedHealth — that outsource parts of this process to third parties like healthinsurance.com and ehealth.

This idea of bringing everything in-house to fully control the patient experience is a recurring theme in Oscar’s strategic moves.

Track all the digital health startups in this brief and many more on our platform Startups working on digital health have the potential to change how medical care is practiced and delivered. Look for Digital Health in the Collections tab. Track digital health startups Digital Health 4165 items

Oscar’s Vertical Integration with Hospitals and Internalization of Functions

When Oscar began, it focused on the exchanges and geographic expansion, moving to multiple counties in New York, New Jersey, Texas, and California within two years. In order to do this, the company outsourced many back-office functions, including claims processing, and also turned to companies like MagnaCare for their networks of hospitals and providers rather than developing its own.

This turned out to be a more expensive strategy, and additionally made the customer experience worse, since Oscar had to rely on the legacy processes of third parties.

In the last couple of years, Oscar has spent a considerable amount of resources to instead create its own tools, networks, and primary care channels. This is actually outlined as part of the company’s 2012 internal deck, which discussed starting Oscar with a focus on the user interface and slowly expanding down the “healthcare stack,” incorporating wellness programs and later its own provider network.

Claims processing

One of the functions Oscar is bringing in-house is claims processing. Most health insurers outsource large parts of their claims and process them in batches, and Oscar did too in its early days. Now, to improve the customer experience, Oscar wants to handle claims in real-time.

The company’s goals for this system are stated below (taken from their blog):

Reduce errors

Better monitoring of data to ensure up-to-date information

Eliminate denied or delayed claims

Tighter fraud and abuse monitoring to prevent unnecessary bills for members

In its first few years of operation, Oscar received many complaints due to unexpectedly high bills and out-of-network surprises. Oscar’s new claims system seems geared to making sure members are not caught off-guard with bills, reduce billing errors that might cause sticker shock and resolving billing issues quickly.

The new claims system is also supposed to send information about patients in real-time, keep provider information up-to-date, and speed up authorizations. Considering some prior authorizations could take weeks, speeding up this process is necessary if one of Oscar’s key differentiators is to excel in user experience.

The company plans to roll out this new system in 2018.

Hospital Networks

The Affordable Care Act introduced a marketplace for insurance companies to sell plans directly to individuals. This provided a great opportunity for Oscar to instantly get in front of a significant number of individuals who were supposed to flock to the exchanges.

Since Oscar was only two years old at the time, it had to rent out a network of hospitals from provider network MagnaCare to be operational by the time the exchanges opened. This cost Oscar a 30% upcharge to use.

In 2016 the company announced it would be halving its network (when its MagnaCare contract expired), as it doubled down on the “narrow networks” model of providing patients with fewer choices, in exchange for a better experience and usually lower prices. This is also an extension of Oscar’s “simplicity” theme, i.e. less choices means a better experience.

The news of Oscar’s network shrinking was followed by its decision to pull out of the Dallas and New Jersey exchanges due to profitability concerns, leading to a surge of press scrutiny on whether Oscar was failing at its mission. We captured this increased media attention using our Trends tool, which mines millions of media articles to track tech and innovation trends. (More recent upticks have primarily been associated with major news around the Trump administration and ACA.)

As Oscar continues to expand into new geographies, building hospital networks (and avoiding the MagnaCare upcharge) is challenging. The company is striking some partnerships to do this.

Small group insurance for employers is a new product Oscar rolled out this year — allowing Oscar to diversify its product offering beyond just the individual exchanges. This has been the focal point for its advertising campaign in New York.

Another example is in Tennessee, where Oscar is partnering with Humana to offer small group insurance as a 50-50 partnership.

Through the Tennessee partnership, Oscar gets access to Humana’s network in the area, a method for the company to quickly enter a state without paying a premium to rent a network. Humana receives Oscar’s customer-facing support systems and can outsource the operations for small group insurance to Oscar.

In Ohio, Oscar is doing something analogous by partnering with the Cleveland Clinic and selling a co-branded individual plan on the exchanges in 2018.

Oscar offers the Cleveland Clinic its customer engagement platform, insurance expertise, and technology stack, and in turn receives the Cleveland Clinic’s brand and network of physicians. As more providers sponsor their own health plans, Oscar can act as an “insurance-as-a-service” provider, offering these tools to health systems.

There are several open questions about whether these partnerships will be successful, including:

How easily will Oscar be able to integrate into the Cleveland Clinic? Can it do this scalably with other health systems?

Many provider-sponsored plans burn money due to higher-than-expected claims costs and difficulties in population health management. How can Oscar’s tools remedy this?

Considering Oscar/Cleveland Clinic is one of the last plans to launch on the individual exchange in Ohio, what kind of population can be expected to sign up (i.e., will they be left with the least desirable patient pool)?

How willing are customers to stay exclusive to the Cleveland Clinic’s network?

This experiment could dictate how Oscar partners with providers going forward.

Telemedicine And Primary Care

While Oscar works with hospital networks, the reality is that the company wants to keep people out of the hospital completely. This is one of the reasons Oscar places its telemedicine functionality in the front of the app, claiming 23% of its members use the feature. Virtual care is also one of Oscar’s high priorities in terms of hiring, (which we’ll examine further in the jobs analysis below).

Oscar is also moving into brick-and-mortar primary care itself through opening the Oscar Center in conjunction with the Mount Sinai Health System. The center made its debut in Brooklyn in 2016, and is available to Oscar’s New York members.

The center has comprehensive primary care and basic mental health services and helps members who need to manage complex conditions. The facility also blurs the line between health and wellness, offering yoga, prenatal classes, and more. The company claims that 98.6% members who use the Oscar Center would recommend it.

This expansion into primary care rides two distinct trends:

The first is the trend toward tech-enabled primary care clinic networks, as evidenced by the financing of companies like One Medical, Forward, and Iora Health, among others. However, while these companies monetize through a subscription, Oscar would presumably monetize its offering by keeping its patients healthier.

The second involves companies moving to become more vertically integrated to provide their own healthcare services. Instead of needing to negotiate with each primary care clinic it partners with, Oscar can have better control of pricing by building its own. It can also build the clinics with tech that immediately integrates with its systems.

With Oscar bringing more of these functions and networks in-house, the company expects to contain its costs more effectively. As Mario Schlosser, CEO of Oscar, has claimed:

“In 2017, I feel for the first time that all of these pieces are in place in a way that you will see it flow through to the financial results as well.”

Oscar by the Numbers — Money & Membership

Oscar’s enrollment increased dramatically in its first 3 years, from fewer than 20,000 in the first year of enrollment to more than 8X that size two years later, as it expanded into more states and exchanges. However, in 2016 Oscar announced it was pulling out of New Jersey and Dallas, leading to a drop in total enrollment.

For 2018, the company has announced its entrance into new states (Tennessee, Ohio), a return to old states like New Jersey, and expansion for both its product offerings and geographic reach within other states like New York, California, and Texas — suggesting that Oscar’s enrollment numbers will increase in 2018.

However, Oscar’s enrollment is still extremely small compared to established players like UnitedHealth and Anthem, which have 47M+ and 33M+ medical enrollees respectively (which doesn’t even include their dental, Medicare, and other plans).

Alongside this geographic expansion, revenue has seen a similar trend, with a 238% revenue spike between 2015 and 2016. However, after Oscar pulled out of several markets, 2017 has been off to a much slower start, with just $72.8M in revenue across three markets in Q1’17.

Oscar’s losses have also mounted, topping more than $200M in 2016. This could in part be due to the cost of building out networks in new states, marketing, and high upfront costs associated with building tools Oscar used to outsource (such as claims processing).

Looking at Oscar’s expense reports for New York, California, and Texas, it’s clear that hospital costs and services eat up most of Oscar’s revenue. However, Oscar’s hospital costs have decreased by more than 43% between Q1’16 and Q1’17, which could be due to a combination of slashing the size of its provider network, dropping the number of enrollees generally, and also building its own network as opposed to renting one from MagnaCare, which included the 30% upcharge as stated above.

It’s also worth noting Oscar’s comparatively high expenditure on administrative costs. As a point of comparison, Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York spends about 9% of revenue on administrative costs and CareConnects spends approximately 16%. Oscar spent more than half of its revenue on administrative costs in Q1’16, though it dropped closer to 40% in Q1’17. Part of this large expenditure could be the cost of building out its own internal systems like a claims processor, while part of it could be Oscar’s focus on customer service which uses a higher touch system, such as its concierge teams.

Oscar appears to be getting control of its finances, with losses representing a small percentage of revenue in 2017. However, the company will have to raise a considerable amount of money going forward, with the company likely coming close to the end of its current runway.

So far, Oscar has raised more than $727M in disclosed funding since 2013, with its most recent $400M round raising at a $2.7B valuation. The company raised its Series C about 20 months ago, and will likely raise again as the numbers come in from next year’s enrollment period when people sign up for health insurance plans.

The company demonstrates the capital-intensive nature of starting a new insurance business. Its first round of institutional financing back in 2013 was for $40M, followed by $30M a year later as the company began rolling out its plans.

Will Oscar find investors to pony up the required capital for expansion? Brian Singerman of Founders Fund (one of Oscar’s big investors) talked about how optimistic he was for the company’s future and cash position. But will enough other investors feel similarly?

Output: Health insurance start-up Oscar is looking to offer more policies to group plans through employers as it fears the marketplace for individual policies may be disrupted by changes to US health coverage policies. The firm is also increasing how closely it works with hospitals, a move that in the past has enabled it to keep costs down. Under the Affordable Care Act, Oscar has been able to offer its policies to individuals via government-supported exchanges. However, tweaks to legislation by the current administration may soon change how the firm is able to sell policies.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Hood Group, Neos form insurtech partnership
 Broker to provide administration services for Neos' smart home insurance proposition. Smart home insurance provider Neos has partnered with data and technology driven broker Hood Group. According to Neos, Hood Group will provide administration services supporting the Neos smart home insurance proposition, including sales support and customer services such as customer helpline, policy fulfilment, mid-term adjustments and renewals. Earlier this year the start-up managing general agent (MGA) launched a proposition which it said generates a home insurance quote in under 30 seconds

Only users who have a paid subscription or are part of a corporate subscription are able to print or copy content. To access these options, along with all other subscription benefits, please contact info@insuranceage.co.uk. You are currently unable to print this content. Please contact info@insuranceage.co.uk to find out more. You are currently unable to copy this content. Please contact info@insuranceage.co.uk to find out more.

Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved. You may share this content using our article tools. Printing this content is for the sole use of the Authorised User (named subscriber), as outlined in our terms and conditions - https://www.infopro-insight.com/terms-conditions/insight-subscriptions/ If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@insuranceage.co.uk

Output: Smart home-managing insurance company Neos has joined forces with brokering start-up Hood Group, in a deal which will see the latter firm provide administrative services to the former. As well as providing coverage, Neos also uses home monitoring to help homeowners avoid damage and security breaches to their properties. Policyholders can have information delivered to their smartphones, helping to prevent incidents like fires, leaks and burglaries.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
SEC makes use of data analysis for fraud detection
 A new Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement initiative will target retail investor harm that occurs when clients work with investment advisers, an SEC official said on Thursday.

Stephanie Avakian, co-director of the SEC Division of Enforcement, said that the agency’s retail strategy task force will use data analytics to find widespread problems involving inadequate fee disclosure and unsuitable product recommendations. It will parse data about products, types of fees and investors, advisory office locations and sales practices. In addition to market data, it will draw on the thousands of tips, complaints and referrals that come into the SEC as well as findings from adviser examinations.

“The goal of the task force is to find the problems [and] think creatively about potential solutions,” Ms. Avakian said at the Securities Enforcement Forum in Washington.

Established in late September, the retail task force won’t pursue cases itself but will advise its enforcement colleagues about where to focus their efforts.

Ms. Avakian said that areas of increasing concern include the sales of high-fee mutual fund share classes when less expensive share classes are available for the same fund, lack of transparency in wrap-fee programs, situations where investors hold inverse exchange-traded funds for the long term, non-disclosure of fees and churning and excessive trading.

“We’ll look to [the task force] to consider these issues broadly, to look for opportunities to send effective messages in a way that maximizes our efficiency and preserves our resources,” Ms. Avakian said.

It’s too early to tell when the first cases arising from the task force’s work will emerge, she said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference. The group is still hiring its staff. But it intends to swing into action quickly.

“I would expect investigations to start in fairly short order,” she said.

In speeches and appearances on Capitol Hill, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has said that he is surprised about the amount of retail investor fraud that continues to occur and that cracking down on it is one of his priorities.

Ms. Avakian said that emphasizing retail enforcement won’t detract from the SEC’s efforts on other kinds of financial fraud or “policing Wall Street.”

“The premise that there is a tradeoff between Wall Street and Main Street enforcement is a false one,” she said.

At the same time that the SEC established the retail task force, it also launched a cyber unit that will target online threats to investors and financial firms.

Output: The US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) retail strategy task force is using data analysis to identify cases where retail investors have been defrauded by advisers. The task force won't be doing the casework, but will pass on pertinent information to enforcement personnel and advise as to the best course of action. The force will look to uncover unsuitable product recommendations and fee disclosures through data analysis, while also poring over tips and complaints submitted to the SEC's website.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
House building robots set to disrupt construction sector
 In Sweden, they build homes in factories with workers using sophisticated tools, and now RANDEK is adding robots.

There are many, including this TreeHugger, who think that wood is the best material for building; when sustainably harvested it is a renewable resource that stores carbon for the life of the building. Most of the attention these days is paid to Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), the sexy plywood on steroids; other mass timber products like Nail Laminated and Dowel Laminated timbers are also hot.

But these technologies use a LOT of wood, far more than is actually needed for structural reasons. For many low and mid rise applications it’s overkill. In many ways, wood framing with dimension lumber makes more sense;

the walls are lighter;

the insulation is in the wall rather than outside, so the assemblies can be thinner;

it is far more efficient in its use of materials- the wood goes a lot farther.

We have previously shown how they do it in Sweden, where companies like Lindbäcks Group use precision tools like those made by RANDEK to crank out wall panels for their flat-packed multiple family buildings, or in Canada where Great Gulf H+me Technology is building houses; In the States, Unity Homes, Ecocor and Katerra are doing it;

Here come the robots

The video above shows how it works for H+me Technology (Formerly Brockport) in Milton, Ontario, just west of Toronto. It’s pretty automated but you still see a lot of people running around placing 2x6s in jigs. But maybe not for long; RANDEK has just launched its ZeroLabor Robotic System, which they describe as:

Output: Swedish manufacturer RANDEK has launched the ZeroLabor Robotic System, an automatic production system which can create wooden walls, roofs and floors for building houses according to customer requirements. The system creates the components, checks them for defects and even recycles its own waste. ZeroLabor is considerably more accurate, faster and less wasteful than its more human-reliant counterparts in the industry, leading to speculation that it, and automated systems like it, could soon become the industry norm.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Lisk adds four developers to team
 JavaScript is currently the most popular programming language in the world, yet when you think of blockchain development, it is typically not the first language that comes to mind. The reasoning behind this may partially be due to JavaScript often being thought of as a front-end technology, even with the continued development and use of Node.js. This misconception may lead developers to utilize other languages that they may be less familiar with and even less suitable for their blockchain applications than JavaScript.

The rationale behind this blog post is to provide you with various sources and Web3 tutorials centered around using JavaScript for blockchain. Our goal is that you will be able to utilize them to build your own blockchain application using JavaScript.

Output: Blockchain application platform Lisk has added four people to its team: Yashar Ayari, Gina Contrino, Juan González and Nazar Hussein. Ayari has joined the Berlin team as front end engineer, with Contrino appointed as front end developer. González will be a devops engineer, and Hussain will take a position as a backend developer. Lisk has been working on expanding its online marketing activities with digital marketing agency Expand Online, and plans to rebrand Lisk in the near future. It has also recently released the latest version of its Lisk Nano wallet.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
AMD sees demand for crypto-mining hardware fall
 AMD tells that the price for its video chips, increased due to a sudden emergence of mining community, is now stabilizing, which might indicate the downfall of mining rush we have lately seen. As the CEO of the popular hardware company says, “we’re also predicting that there will be some leveling-off of some of the cryptocurrency demand”.

The decrease of cryptocurrency cards demand might come from the fact that the hype caused by a long-term bullish trend is fading. Another possible reason: most market players who wanted to establish mining rigs have already done so in previous quarters.

The company also noted the interest in Vega 56 and Vega 64, powerful video cards handy for mining. Strong sales of Radeon chips and Ryzen processors also indicate the demand for these components in the mining community.

Output: Processor provider AMD has said the price of its video chips, such as its Vega 56 and Vega 64 models, has stabilised after a sudden spike due to cryptocurrency mining. Its Radeon chips and Ryzen processors were also bolstered by demand from miners. The CEO of the California company, Lisa Su, has said that the company predicts a “levelling off of some of the cryptocurrency demand” as entry into the crypto-mining industry becomes more expensive.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
TripAdvisor lets restaurants reach customers via sponsored ads
 TripAdvisor has launched an ad product that enables restaurant owners to promote their business to diners through sponsored placements on the travel and restaurant reviews site.

Through TripAdvisor Ads for restaurants, owners are able to buy targeted ad slots – which send customers directly to their restaurant listing – on desktop and mobile web. The ads target people who are actively searching in a specified area, as well as people based on their advanced search queries, such as average meal price, cuisine type, and timing of meals.

“We want to provide restaurant owners with the best possible suite of products and solutions to entice and convert potential diners into loyal customers,” said Bertrand Jelensperger, SVP of TripAdvisor Restaurants. “Now with TripAdvisor Ads, we are providing them with another way to increase their visibility through targeted sponsored placements.

“Whether you operate a Michelin star fine-dining restaurant or a popular neighbourhood deli, this solution ensures that your restaurant’s ad will be displayed to relevant diners at the optimal moment. Supported by more than 28 languages, both travellers and locals browsing TripAdvisor can be sure they are always able to find the perfect restaurant, whether at home or on-the-go.”

TripAdvisor Ads for restaurants work on a cost-per-click basis. Therefore, restaurant owners only need to set a monthly spending limit before activating their ad, and are only charged at the end of each month based on the number of clicks they received on the ad up to their maximum budget.

Join us at the 2017 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony, taking place in London on Thursday 16 November, to mix with the industry's best and brightest, and raise a glass to the year's best campaigns and solutions. To find out more, and to book your place, click here.

Output: TripAdvisor is enabling restaurant owners to advertise their businesses to potential customers through sponsored ads on the site through a new product, TripAdvisor Ads. The feature sends customers directly from ads to the restaurants' TripAdvisor pages, and will deliver ads to users searching in specific areas, as well as those looking for average meal prices, specific cuisine and booking times. The ads will be offered on a cost-per-click basis with a monthly spending limit, with owners charged at the end of the month based on click rate.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Hacks spur blockchain firms to seek decentralised data storage
 In light of the recent Equifax hack, exposing over 143 million Americans confidential information, one must ask, can we really trust these giant corporations with our most sensitive data? Equifax is just another number on the list of companies that have failed to keep their customer’s data safe. In July 2017, Verizon had a data breach and lost 14 million customers information.

The list goes on for 2017, going to show that storing data in a central location is very susceptible to being breached. The Verizon breach is a classic example of a company outsourcing data to storage providers, this one in Israel called Nice Systems. Nice Systems is a very reputable company, that boasts more that 25,000 customers in 150 different countries, but still they weren’t able to prevent a breach. The data accessed was the customers name, customer phone number, and PIN associated with the account; enough information to access a persons Verizon account. With this information, a user could take over a customers phone including social media and email accounts.

Centralized storage has the issue of single point of failure, that point being where the data is stored at the facility. Along with that, companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS) have been known to abuse customers or rival companies data. Deep Roots Analytics was using an AWS server and due to a configuration error there was no protected access, so all someone had to do breach the sensitive information of 198 million Americans was navigate the six-character Amazon sub-domain. And that’s exactly what happened, exposing very sensitive information to the web and now there is a class action lawsuit against Deep Roots Analytics.

Big Data

For the short lifetime of the World Wide Web, corporate giants (Facebook, Google, etc.) have controlled a majority of the data and made a very handsome profit off our data.

We are going to create more data in 2017, than every year previous in human history. Data is everything now, whether it’s your smartphone counting the number of steps you took today or your car’s computer checking the engine or brake pads and analyzing data to suggest when maintenance is needed. A self-driving car can generate up to 1-gigabyte second, which after about three minutes is more data than the largest storage option on the iPhone currently, 256 GBs.

Currently, AWS, known as S3 (Simple Storage Service) is the main front runner in the cloud, with Dropbox, Google Drive, IBM, and Microsoft’s Azure behind them competing for their share of the market, which continues to grow.

These companies all charge a premium for storage in comparison to what the decentralized cloud options offer.

Decentralized Cloud

There are four decentralized cloud platforms: Filecoin, MaidSafe, Siacoin, and Storj. The idea behind these four is to rent out unused harddrive space around the world, which there is a lot of. Think about the desktop you have at home, you could turn it into a revenue-generating asset.

Sharing economy is the future. Market participants will drive market price via supply and demand for storage instead of arbitrary prices set by centralized cloud providers like S3, IBM, etc.

The advantage these provide is the redundancy across multiple nodes. Redundancy in data is simply extra copies of it stored or pieces of the copy stored in case of error in storing or transmission of data, as to prevent loss or partial loss of files.

Security and privacy of your files are better on decentralized network. Your files are broken apart and spread across multiple nodes. So even if a node wants to look at your file, it’s encrypted with a private key that only the file owner has. Along with the fact that it is only a partial file, meaning that it doesn’t matter if the host even gets into your file, it’s a fraction of its original self.

Another advantage decentralized storage offers is close proximity to the server, which means your data will be accessible quickly whether it is the website that is stored on it or simply files you are trying to recover.

Centralized storage units have to set up new facilities which are costly and take time and staff to maintain them. On top of that, you’ll never get the proximity to servers that a decentralized storage can offer as anyone who has a harddrive with free space can offer storage.

Recently human error caused US-East 1 of Amazon S3 to go down, leading to websites and services like Business Insider, Medium, Giphy, and others impacted. Simply due to an incorrect piece of code typed in, thus a larger set of servers were removed; the servers were down for around 4 and half hours.

These coins are similar for the most part, but there are key differences.

Filecoin

Filecoin made headlines recently when it raised $257 million in it’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO) this August, the largest amount raised by an ICO to date. Filecoin was initially going to be open to U.S. investors, but due to a SEC statement that The DAO’s tokens may be considered securities, Filecoin postponed their ICO and left it open to accredited investors in the U.S. For those unaware, an accredited investor is a person who has an annual income of more than $200,000 or a net worth over $1 million.

These actions left many people out of their ICO and it shows for their community as well. They have 1,374 subscribers on their Reddit page, but the posts are very infrequent and lucky to have one post a day. This is generally frowned upon in the crypto community, when a coin lacks a community itself, never a good sign.

Filecoin is apart of Protocol Labs, which is the parent company to the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Protocol Labs mission statement says:

We believe the internet has become humanity’s most important technology. We build protocols, systems, and tools to improve how it works. Today, we are focused on how we store, locate, and move information.

IFPS looks to replace HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol, that thing not many people understand but see in their search bar every day) to make a better and more efficient web. It liberates data from silos, survives network partitions, works offline, routes around censorship, and gives permanence to digital information. The reason I include IFPS is that it can work together via Filecoin providing the backbone storage layer for the IFPS if the product(s) come to fruition.

Protocol Labs has other three other projects under them too: LibP2P, ILPD, and Multiformat.

Filecoin offers a novel Proof-of-Storage:

Proof-of-Replication, allows storage providers to prove that data has been replicated to its own uniquely dedicated physical storage. Enforcing unique physical copies enables a verifier to check that a prover is not deduplicating multiple copies of the data into the same storage space

Proof-of-Spacetime, where blocks are created by miners who are storing data, which doesn’t require the computation power of Proof-of-Work (PoW). Filecoin protocol provides a data storage and retrieval service via a network of independent storage providers that does not rely on a single coordinator, where: (1) clients pay to store and retrieve data, (2) Storage Miners earn tokens by offering storage (3) Retrieval Miners earn tokens by serving data.

The following are the intuitions on how the Filecoin DSN (Decentralized Storage Network) achieves integrity, retrievability, public verifiability, and incentive-compatibility. This is from their whitepaper:

Achieving Integrity: Pieces are named after their cryptographic hash. After a Put request, clients only need to store this hash to retrieve the data via Get and to verify the integrity of the content received.

Achieving Retrievability: In a Put request, clients specify the replication factor and the type of erasure coding desired, specifying in this way the storage to be (f;m)-tolerant. The assumption is that given m Storage Miners storing the data, a maximum of f faults are tolerated. By storing data in more than one Storage Miner, a client can increase the chances of recovery, in case Storage Miners go offline or disappear.

Achieving Public Verifiability and Auditability: Storage Miners are required to submit their proofs of storage to the blockchain. Any user in the network can verify the validity of these proofs, without having access to the outsourced data. Since the proofs are stored on the blockchain, they are a trace of operation that can be audited at any time.

Achieving Incentive Compatibility: Informally, miners are rewarded for the storage they are providing. When miners commit to store some data, then they are required to generate proofs. Miners that skip proofs are penalized (by losing part of their collateral) and not rewarded for their storage.

Achieving Confidentiality: Clients that desire for their data to be stored privately, must encrypt their data before submitting them to the network.

Hosts storing data must verify that they have the data they are supposed to be storing otherwise they will be penalized. A noted downside is that clients must encrypt their data if they desire it be stored privately.

You can currently join Filecoin’s “Early Mining Program” on their website where you fill out a form and wait to hear back for access to the program.

So far, Filecoin is yet to release a product, which puts it in last place in my opinion behind Storj, Sia, and MaidSafe who all offer a working platform where you can mine, host and store data currently.

MaidSafe

Massive Array of Internet Disks – Secure Access For Everyone or also known as MaidSafe. Maidsafe’s goal is to be the world’s first Autonomous Data Network via blockchain based storage solutions that store a data identifier (e.g. hash) in a blockchain, but store the data ‘somewhere else’ do not improve the security of our data. That ‘somewhere else’ still needs to be secured, and if this data can be deleted, or our access denied these ‘solutions’ are not fit for purpose. The SAFE Network removes people from the management of our information to protect the world’s data.

What is SAFE?

SAFE is simply an Autonomous network, that keeps out human interference and alteration to protect the network from abuse. Here is a summary of the safe network from David Irvine, CEO of MaidSafe:

“SAFE at it’s core is an “Autonomous Network“, not a set of federated servers, or owned storage locations, or identifiable nodes, but actually an autonomous network. This means no human intervention, no humans setting prices, no altering configurations to make things work, no tweaking data on disk, no altering rules of the nodes, absolutely no human intervention apart from running a piece of self configuring, self healing software. The network decides prices, rewards and how to protect data, communications and calculations, not any human!”

Maidsafe currently runs off the Proof of Resource (PoR) algorithm. PoR on the Safe Network is similar to Zero Knowledge proofs, where in the farmer/miner doesn’t know the content on any data, but instead knows that the data is held and that it is held accurately.

Nodes that are either unreliable or are trying to game the network, by removing the previously provided resource, they are ‘deranked’ by the network if the node is unable to serve a chunk of data. A node, in this case, would be a farmer who is supposed to validate data.

Project Decorum

The Safe Network also has another project under it called Project Decorum, which the name decorum is originally derived from the original concept of DECentralized fORUM. Soon after starting this project they realized this project had more potential to extend across not just forums, but all social networks. As stated on their website, Decorum’s goal is to realize a decentralized social platform, fit for all kinds of digital social activity.

You can test out Project Decorum at the moment, they explicitly state to expect bugs and that it’s a ‘quick & dirty’ version and does not represent the future of Project Decorum.

Here is a quote from Project Decorum:

Limitations and known issues

The SAFE Network currently lacks a proper API for dynamic data. As a temporary workaround, the Proof of Concept makes unintended use of the SAFE Network DNS system. This means that a new public ID is registered for your account for every new post you make. A known issue with this approach is that after many posts (well over a hundred), the SAFE Launcher may bug out, preventing further activity with that account. Since the data for the current test net will be wiped, this is not a big problem, but be aware nonetheless.

Maidsafe Community

Maidsafe’s Reddit isn’t too active, but I joined their Slack channel which was quite active. One thing I noted about their slack channel was they made people state why they were joining and then had to be approved by a moderator beforehand. I liked this since many Slack channels are plagued with scammers trying to get naive investors to send them Ethereum.

Storj

Storj, formerly known as Storjcoin X (SJCX), is a project that made a key partnership recently. That partnership was with Filezilla, the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) storage client that allows people to access files online. This gives the 15 million users of Filezilla the option to use Storj as there option to store their files.

There is a caveat though since this is run through Filezilla, it means users won’t have to pay using Storj token. This means the Storj token won’t be necessary for the platform, which takes the utility away from the token itself. Though Storj has a nice incentive offering 25GB of free storage and bandwidth per month for new users who sign up with the platform.

Storj recently struck a deal with Cap Linked for storage; Cap Linked is an enterprise storage platform. Very promising news to see for Storj and decentralized storage in general. People are noting the future here.

Storj Labs service takes data as inputs and splits it up into multiple pieces distributing it across a peer-to-peer network of nodes. And because each part is privately encrypted, only the right key can unlock the files in full.

Cap Link is one of many enterprise storage offering cloud storage like Google, Dropbox, Microsoft, and more, except Cap Link is trying to set themselves apart by utilizing the decentralized storage; offering cheaper data storage than any other option currently.

Though it is unknown at the moment if users using CapLinked for storage will be utilizing the Storj token itself. I assume it will be the same case as with Filezilla where it wasn’t necessary to utilize the Storj token for data storage. This is important to note, as the utility in the token is not necessary for the platform itself, thus making the token more or less a security of the Storj company than a token utilized among their ecosystem.

Storj runs off Proof of Retrievability guarantee the existence of a certain piece of data on a remote host.

Below is a comparison of Storj pricing per gigabyte (GB)/month versus current centralized storage providers. As you can see, Storj cut’s your price in half if you are using Microsoft Azure and saves you 35% if you switch from AWS S3.

Here is a statement from F.A.Q. section on what Storj Labs is and differs from Storj:

Our corporate entity Storj Labs aims to bring decentralized cloud storage to the average business and consumer. With constant data breaches and high costs, users are becoming more aware that the current model of cloud storage is broken. Storj Labs provides DaaS (Data-as-a-Service), as well as help building tools and APIs for customers to be able to interface with this new cloud storage model.

Storj is the cloud platform itself, allowing decentralized apps to be built upon it, including an image viewer, .txt and .pdf viewer, a music player, and a video service. They are going for the whole pie, being the backbone layer of the internet, how AWS S3 is currently, hosting websites, and all their content.

One notable issue Storj went through was a leadership and management change in May and then another one in July. The Storj team blog said it was from startup pains, which caused the initial change in May, as Shawn Wilkinson the CEO stepped down from that position to CTO, to focus on the code base and working the community on the open source code.

In July the change was different, James Prestwich stepped down from his role as COO and CFO to pursue other opportunities. Shawn Wilkinson also transitioned to Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) to work on the companies strategy and vision. This left the Storj board to assume role as the CEO until a new CEO was put in place.

Storj Community

Storj’s reddit has 3,884 readers, though it is very active, with posts daily and community members responding to questions you ask. The Storj team is also active on their blog, keeping the community up to date with what the project is doing. Storj’s team does a very good job being transparent with their community, a big ‘plus’. This was shown throughout their management changes that happened between May and July.

Siacoin

I’m biased towards Siacoin, deal with it.

Siacoin has one goal, to be the backbone storage layer of the internet. Sia was conceived at HackMIT in 2013, with the idea of liberating unused storage space of the world and unite it into worldwide free market for data. Nebulous Labs is the parent company to Siacoin and is Venture Capital funded startup located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Sia offers complete privacy, by breaking up files into pieces, encrypting them, and distributing them across nodes. Since you hold your key, you own your data. No outside company or party can access or control your files, unlike traditional cloud storage providers. Siacoin has very high redundancy, as it stores your files across multiple nodes around the globe. And to recover a file you only need four of the forty pieces that are spread across the nodes.

The Sia team has been very transparent with its community throughout the whole process. A great example was when Sia announced they were building ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) Miners for mining Siacoin to help secure the network. The reasoning behind this was to protect the network from a 51% attack, which is where a miner or pool of miners take control of the hash rate and can control what transactions are put through or denied. Also, they could reverse transactions, allowing them to double-spend coins.

This announcement caused many angry Reddit members to come out against Sia, but that wasn’t for long as David Vorick (Sia CEO) wrote an in depth Reddit post explaining why they went ahead with the ASIC miner. I highly suggest you read that Reddit post, it really shows their commitment to the longevity of the project.

The ASIC miner is called Obelisk, which is being worked on by a team separate of the Sia team, as to let them focus on the Sia platform. Currently there have been 1,960 ASIC miners sold at a price of $2,400 per unit. Obelisk has 100x the power of a GPU, allowing owners of them to secure the Sia network.

Sia crushes centralized storage providers when it comes to storage costs and download bandwidth costs. It’s not even in the same ballpark, Sia reduces costs by over 90%.

Siacoin has a caveat, which is for the better, it requires the use of the token to store data; thus giving the token utility. This is so the smart contract can be completed, and it ensures that the host followed through with the contract so the customer can access the data they store on it. If a host doesn’t follow through with the contract they are not paid, and the payment is not received until the contract is complete.

People tend to complain that Siacoin has too high of a supply of tokens, so it’s price is hard to move. That’s why many in the cryptocurrency avoid it as investment, but if you see what they are trying to accomplish, being the backbone layer of the internet, you can see the light at the end of tunnel. As I stated earlier we are storing more data in 2017, than every year previous in human history combined.

Siafunds

Siafunds is a second cryptocurrency to Siacoin. There are only 10,000 Siafunds and all of them are premined. Nebulous inc. currently holds 8,835 of them, the remaining were sold in a crowdfund to finance Sia’s development.

3.9% of all successful contracts get paid out to holders of Siafunds. If you can get your hands on one, I highly suggest you buy one. They are currently sold on Bitsquare, and their price is going for 2.37 BTC. They were originally priced around $10,000, but with Bitcoins recent run from around $4,000 to $5,800, they are not as cheap now. I assume the people who listed their Siafunds haven’t changed their BTC price to reflect the change in BTC to USD.

Here is a guide on how to purchase Siafunds.

Sia Community

Sia has a very active community, you can check out their Reddit or Discord, where there is frequent work on Sia by community members. This is something that sets Sia apart from the other decentralized storage providers, their strong community, which comes from their team which is very transparent and focused on being the backbone storage layer of the internet.

Sia Stats is a great example of community participation. A community member put this together for Sia, so you can check storage prices, active contracts, transactions, and more.

Future of Data

I just gave you the tools, now you just have to open your mind up, and see the future of data storage. It’s a sharing economy, where data is controlled by the original owners, not the corporations or service providers. This is one of the most promising segments of blockchain to come out.

The change in storage will likely not happen overnight, but in 5 years you will see it being used by everyone. Filecoin, Maidsafe, Storj, and Siacoin are very promising projects and have the ability to all coexist with each other in the future. With the way data storage is heading, the market will be so big, it’s conceivable to see more than one of these providing decentralized cloud storage down the line.

TL;DR Decentralized storage is the future of data storage and a free web.

Disclaimer:

This author has a stake in Siacoin.

This is not investment advice, always do your own research. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based on your own personal circumstances.

Output: Data breaches in recent months have led blockchain companies to initiate decentralised cloud storage and computing projects to increase cybersecurity. Unlike centralised data storage solutions, which have a single point of failure, decentralised options such as those of MaidSafe, Siacoin, Filecoin and Storj rent unused hard-drive space from private PCs and servers globally in exchange for their respective tokens. Costs are driven by supply and demand, rather than arbitrary pricing structures set by storage companies, and hardware redundancy is reduced because files are broken into sections, encrypted with private keys and stored across multiple user networks.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Singapore chooses hands-off approach to cryptocurrency regulation
 SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) - Singapore doesn't plan to regulate cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, but will remain alert to money laundering and other potential risks stemming from their use, the head of the country's central bank said.

"As of now I see no basis for wanting to regulate cryptocurrencies," Monetary Authority of Singapore managing director Ravi Menon said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

Rather, the central bank's focus is to "look at the activities surrounding the cryptocurrency and asking ourselves what kinds of risks they pose, which risks would require a regulatory response, and then proceed from there," Menon added.

Bitcoin's rally and the proliferation of other digital assets is attracting the wary eyes of regulators globally, though many central banks have still refrained from supervising cryptocurrencies themselves. China and South Korea have banned initial coin offerings, while Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for regulation of the sector.

"Very few jurisdictions regulate cryptocurrencies per se. Most have taken the approach that the currency itself does not pose a risk that warrants regulation," Menon said in a separate Bloomberg Television interview with Haslinda Amin.

Singapore already requires virtual-currency intermediaries such as exchange operators to comply with requirements to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, Menon noted in the Bloomberg News interview. "This will be formalised in the coming payment services regulation which we are working on," Menon said.

Output: Singapore has no intention of regulating cryptocurrencies, though it will curb money laundering and other risks associated with the assets, Monetary Authority MD Ravi Menon has said. The city-state requires virtual currency intermediaries follow money laundering and terrorism financing laws, which are due to be formalised in payment services regulations. Many central banks have decided against cryptocurrency supervision, though China and South Korea have banned initial coin offerings and Russia has called for oversight.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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AI can pick out one voice among a crowd
 Voiceprints can help make sense of what people in a crowd say Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos

Devices like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home can usually deal with requests from a lone person, but like us they struggle in situations such as a noisy cocktail party, where several people are speaking at once.

Now an AI that is able to separate the voices of multiple speakers in real time promises to give automatic speech recognition a big boost, and could soon find its way into an elevator near you.

The technology, developed by researchers at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was demonstrated in public for the first time at this month’s Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies show in Tokyo.

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It uses a machine learning technique the team calls “deep clustering” to identifies unique features in the “voiceprint” of multiple speakers. It then groups the distinct features from each speaker’s voice together, allowing it to disentangle multiple voices and then reconstruct what each person was saying. “It was trained using 100 English speakers, but it can separate voices even if a speaker is Japanese,” says Niels Meinke, a spokesperson for Mitsubishi Electric.

Meinke says the system can separate and reconstruct the speech of two people speaking into a single microphone with up to 90 per cent accuracy. If there are three speakers the accuracy dips, but is still up to 80 per cent. In both cases, this was with speakers the system had never encountered before.

Read more: Speech recognition AI identifies you by voice wherever you are

Conventional approaches to this problem – such as using two microphones to replicate the position of a listener’s ears – have only managed 51 per cent accuracy.

In overcoming the “cocktail party effect” that has dogged AI research for decades, the new technology could help smart assistants in homes and cars work better. It could also improve automatic speech transcription, and be used to help law enforcement agencies reconstruct recordings of conversations that had been muddied by music, for example.

In preliminary tests the system was able to separate the voices of up to five people at once. “The system could be used to separate speech in a range of products including lifts, air-conditioning units and household products,” says Meinke.

Indeed, Mitsubishi is now in the process of building its voice recognition technology into lifts and air-conditioners, among other products.

Reference: arxiv.org/abs/1508.04306

Output: An AI developed in the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory can distinguish between multiple speakers in real time. The tech utilises a machine learning technique called "deep clustering" to identify the vocal signature of various speakers, allowing it to distinguish multiple voices and to reconstruct what was said. The software was trained with 100 English-speaking subjects, but can separate voices speaking in other languages.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Barclays to head off scammers with pre-payment pop-up questions
 Barclays Bank customers making 'out-of-character' online funds transfers will first have to answer a battery of questions designed to make them reflect on whether they may be a victim of a scam

The pro-active fraud reduction effort comes as more and more UK consumers are being duped into sending money to fraudsters posing as legitimate business contacts.

In an initiative designed to stop fraudsters in their tracks, Barclays Bank customers will now be asked three fraud prevention questions immediately after making an unusually large or suspicious online payment. If the customer has any doubts about the payment after answering the questions, they are asked to call Barclays immediately using the number on the back of their card.

The bank says the questions are designed for customers to have a ‘stop and think’ moment to consider whether the request they have had to make a payment is genuine.

To help spread awareness of common criminal tactics, Barclays is also staging a series of 'Embarrassing Fraud Clinics' across the country where consumers can have a ‘digital health check’ alongside personalised advice on protecting against potential cyber threats.

Ashok Vaswani, CEO Barclays UK says: “The Embarrassing Fraud Clinic and our new online fraud intervention service makes up the next phase of our £10 million commitment to helping people stay safe in cyber space, launched earlier this year. With the average British person being targeted 12 time over the last 12 months never has it been more vital for us to lead the fightback against the fraudsters and increase the public’s resilience to cyber-attacks."

Output: Barclays Bank has introduced a new anti-scam service in the UK that will send three fraud-prevention pop-up questions to owners of accounts involved in seemingly suspicious online fund transfers. The questions are designed to prompt customers to stop and think before fulfilling requests for money as the bank seeks to stop people being duped into making cash transfers. The bank is also hosting Embarrassing Fraud Clinics across the UK to give customers a digital health check and personal advice on cyber protection.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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WaveX joins ArabianChain for P2P smart contracts
 WaveX, a renewable electricity trading and p2p solar panel financing platform announced today it will be the first UAE-based startup to utilize ArabianChain’s blockchain based smart contracts and development studio. As a startup with a platform established to allow trade of energy between two entities, WaveX aims to increase the share of renewable energy and make energy production environmental friendly.

Additionally, this platform is also optimized to help utility companies reduce their continuous investment in accelerating their energy production. Through this collaboration with WaveX, ArabianChain endeavors to enable startups across the region to leverage their open source tools and foster innovation in the blockchain domain.

ArabianChain Technology is an open source, community-based project with the goal of building a decentralized, consensus-driven, peer to peer, open source, blockchain-based platform for distributed applications. ArabianChain tech will leverage and improve blockchain technology and build a full-featured application platform on top of it.

ArabianChain founder and CEO Mohammed Alsehli said:

“According to Markets and Markets, the global blockchain market is expected to reach USD 2,312.5 million by 2021. With an ambitious vision spearheaded by the UAE leadership, we believe this strategic partnership with WaveX will be a stepping stone in empowering startups to embrace blockchain and effectively innovate across the region. “As the field is rapidly evolving, many farsighted startups and organizations in the region are already exploring the potential of blockchain to not only enhance their capabilities but also process transactions and exchange information in an effective, secure and reliable manner. This is central to the UAE Blockchain Vision which aims to encourage paperless transactions, reducing approximately 100 million paper transactions annually.”

Based in the UAE and with operations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, ArabianChain is a leading Middle Eastern innovator in the blockchain sector. The company enables governments, enterprises, startups and individuals to use blockchain-based tools and languages and build their transactions and contracts on its platform, to record all kinds of transactions.

Output: Renewable electricity trading and solar panel finance platform WaveX will be the first UAE start-up to use blockchain-based smart contracts from open source provider ArabianChain. The move should increase the amount of energy traded and improve energy production businesses' environmental standards. ArabianChain helps start-ups to better use open source technology and innovate in the blockchain space. The partnership will "be a stepping stone in empowering start-ups to embrace blockchain" across the UAE, said ArabianChain founder and CEO Mohammed Alsehli.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Russian group claims Europe first with habitable 3D-printed house
 Oct 24, 2017 | By Benedict

AMT-SPECAVIA, a Moscow-based group of machining and 3D printing companies, says it has built Europe’s first habitable 3D printed house. The residence, located in Yaroslavl and reportedly spanning almost 300 square meters, may also be Europe’s largest 3D printed building.

It’s been around two years since AMT-SPECAVIA, a group specializing in construction additive manufacturing, started work on a livable 3D printed house in Yaroslavl, Russia. And although “livable house” might sound like a tautology, it was actually a highly ambitious project when you consider the current state of architectural 3D printing.

Because while 3D printing in the construction industry is a hot talking point right now, even the most advanced companies in the field have struggled to create buildings that are large enough or strong enough to be considered habitable.

Many predict that large, 3D printed apartment blocks will appear sooner rather than later, but at present the landscape is scarce. Just browse through our list of 3D printed buildings and construction projects from last year: many of the designs are spectacular, but many were made purely for show.

AMT-SPECAVIA wanted to do things differently, by building a residential building that not only grabbed some media attention, but which could actually house a local Yaroslavl family once finished.

“It was important for us to set a precedent—to show in practice that 3D construction technology is working,” commented Alexander Maslov, general director of the AMT-SPECAVIA Group.

Today, the project is indeed finished, with the group installing plumbing, heating, and electricity—ready for the first residents of the 3D printed house.

But it's obviously more than just an average Russian home. The Moscow 3D printing group claims that its 3D printed building, with a total area of 298.5 square meters, is the largest 3D printed building in Europe, as well as the continent’s only habitable printed residence.

From what we know about other 3D printed structures, both of those claims could be true, though many will of course debate what counts as a “3D printed building,” depending on how much of it is 3D printed and how much of it is made using other fabrication techniques. (Earlier today we saw just how impressive a 3D printed floor can be.)

Not every part of the Yaroslavl house is 3D printed, of course, but large internal sections of it are. These 3D printed sandcrete forms were fabricated off-site during a one-month period in 2015.

“We printed the building in parts (the walls of the house, decorative elements, the tower), took the parts to the construction site, and assembled them as a LEGO kit,” Maslov explained. “Since then, of course, the equipment has been improved: both the speed of printing and the quality. But even our first model proved to be reliable and efficient equipment.”

AMT-SPECAVIA used its own S-6044 construction 3D printer, a machine with a build area of 3.5 x 3.6 x 1 meters, for the house. Easily available M-300 sandcrete was used as the printing material for the large structural sections of the building, with each printed layer measuring 10 mm high and 30 to 50 mm wide.

The 3D printing group was able to do all its printing over a one-month period thanks to the S-6044’s printing speed of up to 15 square meters per hour.

With the 3D printed house expected to be fit for habitation by the end of October, Maslov evidently considers the project to have been a success: “To paraphrase the words of the famous Russian song, we managed to make a fairy tale come true.”

The SPECAVIA company was founded in 2009, and has been making construction 3D printers since 2015.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Output: A consortium of Russian companies has completed what it claims is Europe's first habitable 3D-printed house. The Moscow-based manufacturing group AMT-SPECAVIA, which includes 3D-printing specialists and machining companies, has been working on the construction project for two years. The finished house was built in Yaroslavl and has a total area of 298.5 sq m, with large structural sections 3D-printed from M-300 sandcrete over a period of one month. It has now been connected to utilities and is expected to be ready for habitation at the end of October.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Homebuyers deterred by unsightly, costly-to-maintain solar panels
 Home owners looking to put their property on the market to sell often look at what will help them get a good deal but now new research reveals what is likely to have devalued the price of a home.

The things most likely to devalue a home include solar panels, bold interior design, swimming pools and dingy, dark rooms, according to a new report from the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA)

‘The house moving process is stressful, so it’s important to know what adds value to your home and what might detract or put off potential buyers. Sometimes the improvements you have made might not appeal to buyers, so even though you’ve spent money on them, they might not necessarily add any value,’ said Katie Griffin, NAEA president.

The NAEA says that while solar panels may save money on energy bills in the short term, and they’re environmentally friendly, they might not actually add any value to your home. The report says that the technology ages quickly and it can be expensive to upgrade.

The same applies to built-in kitchen appliances, which are great to start with, but within five years are out of date. Solar panels can also appear as unsightly and unattractive, and those more concerned with aesthetics than the environment don’t usually want them stuck on the side of their roof.

Particularly colourful or bold interiors could put off buyers and the NAEA says that it might be worth re-decorating before putting a property on the market. Estate agents say that typically, modestly decorated homes are most desirable as home owners can easily see how their own belongings would fit into the space, and how they could make it their home.

Although great fun for a weekend or two in the summer, outdoor swimming pools in Britain aren’t usually considered an attractive house feature. They’re expensive to maintain, use up a lot of space, and the weather means they cannot be used very often, often making them a lot more fuss than they’re worth.

Sellers should make sure that any planning permission and building regulations are in order before selling. Any work carried out such as extensions or conversions should have the appropriate planning permission and building regulations, and buyers need access to these documents.

Finally the report says that if there are two identical properties for sale and one is bright and airy while the other is dark and dingy, nine times out of the 10 the brighter one will be worth more, because it’s more desirable. Foliage around windows, and large trees should be cut back before marketing to give the impression of a light and spacious home.

Output: Solar panels can make a home less desirable to buyers and reduce its value, according to new research in the UK by the National Association of Estate Agents. Potential buyers can be put off by the appearance of the panels and the fear of hidden costs, the study found. Despite initial savings on energy bills, the fact that the technology can quickly become outdated and need upgrading is seen as a negative factor in marketing a property. A similar sentiment was found with outdoor swimming pools and built-in kitchen appliances.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Regus WeWork adds gym to New York City co-working space
 Co-working company WeWork is opening a gym in New York, which includes boxing and yoga studios, grassy flooring and a Roman-inspired salt bathing pool.

WeWork, which rents desks and office spaces around the world, has added the Rise by We gym to its FiDi office space at 85 Broad Street, in New York's Financial District. However, users do not have to be WeWork members for access.

Designed in-house and overseen by the company's head of interiors, Brittney Hart, the gym aims to provide members with a rounded health and fitness experience, including a spa and a cafe serving healthy fare alongside the gymnasium.

The gym forms part of the WeWork's progressive outlook on creating spaces that suit contemporary lifestyles. While first disrupting the workspace with its shared offices, last year it unveiled a concept for co-living apartments in New York.

In Rise by We, WeWork has divided the fitness space into three areas according to different exercises and the spaces they demand.

The first titled Fight is for boxing, kickboxing and mixed martial arts. In the studio, punch bags hang from black steel ceiling beams and are reflected in infinite rows in the mirrored walls. On one half of each bag, a paler material provides offsets the rest of the darkly finished space, which includes black walls and dark flooring.

The second studio, named Flight, designed for cardiovascular activities like running, rowing and functional training. Traditional equipment is arranged on one side of the room, leaving a large open area for gymnastic bands and ropes.

Contrasting the other two studios, calmer activities of yoga and meditation will take placed in the third studio, called Mindfulness. Dark wood panels cover the floor and paler wooden boards line the walls, while planting boxes hang from ceiling.

There is also "semi-private" workout facility, featuring a grass-like material on the floor, for those enrolled in the gym's Turf programme. These members undergo an assessment, including a 3D body scan, before being assigned a tailored programme.

A combination of pale stone wall tiles contrast black floors in the Rise by We "superspa", which features delicate lighting to create a moody atmosphere.

Envisioned as a modern take on the Roman bath, the spa includes a warm pool with mineral salts to reduce muscle soreness and cold showers, as well as a sauna and steam room.

In the reception, a white tiled desk extends to form staggered seating fitted with potted plants, and is reflected in the mirrored ceiling above.

Output: Abstract: WeWork has opened a gym at one of its New York City office spaces. The Rise by We gym is based at its space at 85 Broad Street in the city's financial district and is also open to non-WeWork members. The gym is divided into three areas: Fight for boxing and martial arts; Flight, for running and other cardiovascular activities; and Mindfulness, for yoga and meditation. A semi-private workout facility, with grass-like material on the floor, is available for members enrolled on the gym's tailored Turf programme.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Precise gene-editing technique offers hope for inherited diseases
 The human genome contains six billion DNA letters, or chemical bases known as A, C, G and T. These letters pair off—A with T and C with G—to form DNA’s double helix. Base editing, which uses a modified version of CRISPR, is able to change a single one of these letters at a time without making breaks to DNA’s structure.

That’s useful because sometimes just one base pair in a long strand of DNA gets swapped, deleted, or inserted—a phenomenon called a point mutation. Point mutations make up 32,000 of the 50,000 changes in the human genome known to be associated with diseases.

In the Nature study, researchers led by David Liu, a Harvard chemistry professor and member of the Broad Institute, were able to change an A into a G. Such a change would address about half the 32,000 known point mutations that cause disease.

To do it, they modified CRISPR so that it would target just a single base. The editing tool was able to rearrange the atoms in an A so that it instead resembled a G, tricking cells into fixing the other DNA strand to complete the switch. As a result, an A-T base pair became a G-C one. The technique essentially rewrites errors in the genetic code instead of cutting and replacing whole chunks of DNA.

“Standard genome-editing methods, including the use of CRISPR-Cas9, make double-stranded breaks in DNA, which is especially useful when the goal is to insert or delete DNA bases,” Liu said on a conference call with journalists on Tuesday. “But when the goal is to simply fix a point mutation, base editing offers a more efficient and cleaner solution.”

Liu said base editing isn’t meant to be a replacement to traditional gene editing with CRISPR, but rather another option for altering the genome in an attempt to correct disease. If CRISPR is akin to a pair of scissors, base editing is more like a pencil, he said.

Previously, researchers had created base editors capable of making the opposite kind of swap—changing a G into an A. Substitutions of a G for an A in certain parts of the DNA represent about 15 percent of disease-associated point mutations. In September, Chinese researchers reported that they used one of these editing tools in an embryo to remove the genetic mutation that causes anemia.

Working in cells taken from patients, Liu and his colleagues used their base-editing tool to correct a point mutation that causes hereditary hemochromatosis, a disorder that causes the body to absorb too much iron from food. This excess iron can build up over time and cause liver cancer and other liver diseases, diabetes, heart disease, or joint disease.

Output: A modification to a gene-editing technique that enables scientists to more precisely recode genetic material could offer hope for currently untreatable inherited diseases. The CRISPR-Cas9 technique, created by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, uses “base editing” to change DNA and RNA molecules. The technique could be used to alter genetic mutations responsible for many diseases. The tool “rewrites” genetic code, rather than deleting and replacing whole strands of DNA. A team of Chinese researchers reported a world-first demonstration of the technique on a human embryo is September.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Precise gene-editing technique offers hope for inherited diseases
 In 2016, David Liu and colleagues developed a DNA 'base editor'—a system that would make it possible to change C•G base pairs to T•A base pairs within DNA without introducing double-stranded breaks. This approach involves tethering of a cytidine deaminase to an inactive RNA-guided Cas9 complex that enables site selectivity. However, this system was unable to correct about half of the single nucleotide polymorphisms that are known to be pathogenic. Now, David Liu and collaborators describe the next step in genomic base editing technology, designed to tackle the conversion of A•T base pairs to G•C base pairs. Beginning with a bacterial adenosine deaminase that acts on RNA, they used seven rounds of selection and refinement to produce ABE7.10. This enzyme, again tethered to an inactive RNA-guided Cas9 complex, uses DNA as a substrate and resulted in an average correction efficiency of 53% across multiple sites and contexts in the genome, with a very low mutagenic background. Importantly, the system can be used both to correct disease-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms and to introduce disease-suppressing ones.

Output: A modification to a gene-editing technique that enables scientists to more precisely recode genetic material could offer hope for currently untreatable inherited diseases. The CRISPR-Cas9 technique, created by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, uses “base editing” to change DNA and RNA molecules. The technique could be used to alter genetic mutations responsible for many diseases. The tool “rewrites” genetic code, rather than deleting and replacing whole strands of DNA. A team of Chinese researchers reported a world-first demonstration of the technique on a human embryo is September.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Linux Academy raises $6.8m to expand edtech, training offering
 Linux Academy and Cloud Assessments, a Dallas, TX-based online Linux and cloud training platform and community, secured $6.8m in Series A funding.

Arthur Ventures made the investment.

The company intends to use the funds to continue expanding the Linux Academy content catalog, as well as to grow its Cloud Assessments platform with new training and hiring tools.

Led by Anthony James, Founder and CEO, Linux Academy offers a cloud computing education platform that tests students in live server environments. Through self-paced courses, hands-on labs, six cloud servers, personal access to expert instructors, and a learning library, the company caters to a range of skill levels from beginner to expert. Courses are geared toward Linux, AWS, Google Cloud Platforms, OpenStack, DevOps, Azure, Big Data, and Containers.

Cloud Assessments uses artificial intelligence to personalize cloud training based on a person’s current and changing skill set. It allows enterprises to test and train their IT teams, as well as prospective job candidates, on their cloud technology skills by taking hands-on Challenges in live environments. Cloud Assessments also offers Quests and Learning Activities so individuals can learn efficiently, earning badges of completion along the way to prove their skills.

More than 250,000 aspiring and expert engineers have developed new skills through Linux Academy, with more signing up every day. Many of the world’s finest technology companies and institutions also train at Linux Academy, including Rackspace, the Associated Press, MailChimp, the University of Alabama, the University of Arizona, Clemson University, and more.

FinSMEs

24/10/2017

Output: Texas-based Linux Academy and its Cloud Assessments platform have raised $6.8m in series A funding from Arthur Ventures. The Linux Academy enables students to learn in live server environments, while Cloud Assessments delivers personalised training with the use of artificial intelligence. The new funds will be used to expand Linux Academy's content catalogue, and add training and hiring tools to the Cloud Assessments platform.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Fintech Credit Sesame raises $42m
 Credit Sesame, a personalized credit service and financial wellness company, announced on Wednesday it secured $42 million in equity and venture debt funding. According to the fintech startup, the funding comes from existing and new investors including Menlo Ventures, Inventus Capital, Globespan Capital, IA Capital, SF Capital, among others, along with a strategic investor.

Founded in 2011, the California-based company offers a free online personal finance tool that provides consumers a way to save money on loans and credit needs. The services also provide a free monthly credit score and a complete view of credit and debt all in one place. Credit Sesame has attracted over 12 million members.

“Our patent pending analytics engine automatically reviews all of your debt, home loans and credit, then evaluates thousands of lending products to bring you unbiased, personalized recommendations for maximum savings. Credit Sesame keeps working for you, delivering free credit and score updates and market monitoring for instant alerts and savings opportunities. Credit Sesame empowers consumers with bank level technology to manage their finances better.”

Credit Sesame also noted its robo-advisor technology leverages significant consumer data and analytics along with thousands of rules and insights that have been developed and proven over the past several years. The technology aims to simplify and automate the management of consumer credit and loans, addressing the liability side of the balance sheet and helping consumers achieve improved financial wellness. Adrian Nazari, Founder and CEO of Credit Sesame, stated:

“While many companies have spent the last few years catching up to our free credit score offerings for consumers, Credit Sesame has been developing and proving robo-advisor technology. This technology translates consumer financial and credit information into simple and actionable steps that consumers can easily understand and utilize to improve their financial profile and leverage their credit. As a result, 45% of our members are engaged monthly, helping us achieve an unprecedented relationship and engagement with our members.”

The equity and venture debt funds will be used to accelerate the company’s growth, hiring, and member acquisition, and to advance its analytics, robo-advisor, and machine learning technologies. Credit Sesame also revealed that it intends to add over 100 new employees to its offices in downtown Mountain View and its newly acquired office in San Francisco in the next 12 months.

Credit Sesame added that the new $42 million in funding consists of $26.6M in equity and $15.5M in venture debt, bringing the San Francisco-based fintech company’s total funding to over $77 million. Financial Technology Partners LP acted as an exclusive strategic and financial advisor to the company for this round.

Output: A Californian fintech company that offers personalised credit advice to its users has secured additional funding of $42m in its latest investment round. Credit Sesame gives users a free online tool which helps identify lending products and services that could help them manage their finances more efficiently. It was established in 2011, and now claims to have 12 million members. The company uses artificial intelligence 'robo-adviser' technology to turn customer information and analytics into practical advice. It will use the additional investment to hire staff and develop this technology further.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Robots with IQ's of 10,000 in 30 years: Softbank CEO
 Billionaire Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Corp., shakes hands with a human-like robot called Pepper, developed by the company's Aldebran Robotics unit, during a news conference in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan.

Super artificial intelligence is coming, and sooner than you might expect. That's according to SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. The Japanese billionaire spoke from the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. In about 30 years, artificial intelligence will have an IQ of 10,000, Son says. By comparison, the average human IQ is 100 and genius is 200, according to Son. Mensa, "the High IQ society," starts accepting members with an IQ score of 130. The idea of machine learning becoming smarter than the human brain is often referred to as the "singularity." When exactly this will happen is oft-debated among the tech community. "Singularity is the concept that [mankind's] brain will be surpassed, this is the tipping point, crossing point, that artificial intelligence, computer intelligence surpass [mankind's] brain and that is happening in this century for sure. I would say there is no more debate, no more doubt," Son says. Son is particularly aggressive in his prediction of how soon the singularity will happen — in the "next 30 years or so," he says.

It is in Son's best interest to believe in the power of artificial intelligence. Not only is he the leader of a tech company, but he is heavily invested in the future of AI. Son is in charge of a $100 billion Vision Fund, which he expects to invest within five years, all in companies that have at least some relationship to AI. The tech executive believes that artificial intelligence will dramatically change every industry. Son, 60, remembers the first time he encountered the smartphone, a tool which has transformed the world we currently live in. "When I met with Steve Jobs, before he announced the iPhone, he told me, 'Masa, Masa, if you see what I'm developing, when I'm finished, I'm going to show you, you're going to piss off your pants.' And when I saw it, I actually almost did." Today, humanoid robots like SoftBank's Pepper, which can perceive human emotions, according to its website, impress most of us. In the future Son envisions, we will laugh at the capabilities of Pepper.

"Thirty years from now, they are going to learn by themselves, they are maybe going to laugh at you and us," Son says. "Today they look cute, they will stay cute, but they will be super smart." Currently, some robots are smarter than humans in some areas, says Son. "But 30 years from now, most of the subjects, they will be so much smarter than us. Because they are going to be a million times smarter than today, million times," says Son. "We mankind created tools, the premise was mankind were always smarter than the tool we invented so we control," he says. "This is the first time ... the tool becomes smarter than ourselves." One area where humans will always reign supreme over robots, though, is imagination, says Son. "If you have to envision, 10 years or 30 years later, at least some humans will have a better imagination than them. So, it's not the end. The power of the brain is no limit. The imagination that we can have has no limit. So we are also going to improve our imaginations and our feelings, gut feeling." See also: SoftBank's Masayoshi Son aims to control 90% of the chip market Elon Musk: Governments will obtain AI technology 'at gunpoint' if necessary In offices of the future, everyone will have a souped-up Amazon Echo-type robot assistant

Output: Artificial intelligence will significantly overtake human IQs in the next few decades, according to the Japanese CEO of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son. The billionaire told the audience at a tech conference in Saudi Arabia that he expects robots to develop an IQ of 10,000 within 30 years, compared to the average human score of around 100. He predicted the 'point of singularity' at which machines will become more intelligent than their creators is rapidly approaching, but that human brains will remain superior in their capacity for imagination.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Agencies sidestep unresponsive Facebook go direct to advertisers
 A head of operations for a West Coast-based agency recently scheduled an internal training with a Facebook representative so her team of eight could learn best practices on the platform. But the Facebook rep canceled the meeting last minute due to a scheduling conflict. The agency exec emailed the rep every week to reschedule the training. Four weeks later, she finally got a response.

“I just thought that Facebook didn’t care about us because we didn’t spend enough with the platform,” said the agency executive over breakfast at the Digiday Agency Summit in Charleston, South Carolina, on Oct. 24. “Our clients combined spend at least $3 million on Facebook.”

The exec’s experience with Facebook is not unique. In a town hall-style meeting (where discussions are not for attribution) of around 60 agency executives at the agency summit, many identified Facebook as one of their biggest challenges. The common reasons given: Facebook reps are unresponsive and don’t have enough knowledge to help agencies with campaign-specific questions; Facebook aggressively circumvents agencies to work directly with brands; and Facebook keeps a tight hold on its data.

At the Digiday Agency Summit: We asked agency professionals to write down the challenges they’re facing today. Zoom in to read what’s keeping them up at night. #DigidayAgency A post shared by Digiday (@digiday) on Oct 23, 2017 at 2:42pm PDT

“Facebook constantly changes, while the rep we have over there doesn’t keep us updated on those changes,” said one agency attendee in the town hall meeting.

A bigger irritant is Facebook’s habit of going directly to brands, according to attendees. A media agency executive said Facebook does this because at the end of the day, the brands have the final say. Google does this, too, but Facebook seems to be more aggressive, according to agency attendees. In some cases, Facebook — and Google — representatives pitched their ad products to clients directly after her team already declined them on behalf of the clients, the media agency exec said.

“Facebook and Google believe that if they can present something new or win clients’ favor through fancy dinners, they will push clients to make business decisions,” said this person.

Underlying these gripes, of course, are fears that Facebook will put agencies out of a job. “When you have such a huge hole, it invites a client-direct relationship, meaning that agencies are not validated,” another exec said.

“Facebook has a compelling story to tell,” said a digital strategy head for a Philadelphia-based agency. “It has access to more data on people than we can imagine having. Facebook can present clients a closed-loop attribution — it is taking the lead for what consultants are doing much faster than agencies are.”

Agency executives also said that in some cases, Facebook suggests to clients that they should work with Facebook’s in-house content studio Creative Shop, rather than an external agency.

Patrick Harris, vp of global agency development for Facebook, responded to the agency complaints, saying Facebook is completely focused on its partnerships with agencies. Facebook has added people to its agency teams for the past six years and developed tools like online learning and certification program Blueprint to keep advertisers and agencies updated, Harris said.

“We are certainly not perfect, but we’ve demonstrated progress,” he said. “We take accountability if we don’t live up to our agencies’ expectations.”

As for the claim that Facebook goes around agencies to land brands on its own, Harris said Facebook is not trying to cut agencies out of the equation. “It’s not about pushing specific products and solutions. We want to make sure that the ad tools that clients and agencies use actually drive brand effectiveness,” he said. “From time to time, we have clients who want direct conversations with us because they want to extend the partnership beyond media [buying].”

Whether brands have the ability to manage Facebook on their own is a question, and agencies, perhaps self-servingly, said clients would get burned when they work directly with Facebook because nuances exist in how to market on the platform, and Facebook is just one piece of a company’s overall marketing strategy. “Facebook can’t keep up with email requests from an agency, let alone from a client,” said an agency executive in the town hall meeting. “That is where Facebook falls short.”

And as Facebook holds its data close, like other walled gardens, agency executives also question the reliability of the data. “It is a black box,” said an agency executive. “You can validate some leads, but not much else.”

Shareen Pathak contributed to this story.

Output: Advertising agencies have recorded a range of complaints about their relationship with Facebook, with many criticising the company for being unresponsive to their needs. Others have raised concerns that the social media platform is trying to circumvent agencies and build direct relationships with brands, whilst pushing its own content studio, Creative Shop. Responding to the criticisms, Facebook claimed it is committed to working with agencies, and suggested that direct contacts with clients were infrequent and related to services beyond advertising.