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Diesel scandals could destroy big car makers' future
 The most immediate impact of the emissions cheating scandal that has engulfed Volkswagen and may be spreading to automakers like Fiat Chrysler is an environmental and public health crisis. Worldwide, diesel vehicles are producing about 50 percent more nitrogen oxide than regulations allow, according to a new study, which links those emissions to 38,000 premature deaths in 2015.

But, in the long run, the diesel fallout could reach further, helping set up carmakers as the next industry to be upended by Silicon Valley. As shifts like autonomy, electrification, and shared ownership change the way people use and buy cars, these companies will have enough trouble navigating the coming decades.

Dedication to diesel adds to the challenge, chaining automakers to a losing technology. And for those caught breaking the rules, expensive legal settlements and fines, which for Volkswagen have exceeded $22 billion in the United States alone, will divert funds from research and development just as these changes in driving technology threaten to render traditional carmakers obsolete.

Jack Ewing Jack Ewing is European economics correspondent for The New York Times and author of Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal (W.W. Norton). He is based in Frankfurt.

In the past century, few industries have been as closed to new entrants as the car business, with its massive overhead costs, complex supplier networks, and slim profit margins. That’s changing as self-driving technology, electric propulsion, and manufacturing advances create an opening for disruptive new competitors. Tesla is the first new car company to gain a foothold in decades, it’s unlikely to be the last.

This opportunity arrives just as a growing number of the traditional carmakers stand accused of using engine software to fool regulators and hide excess emissions of nitrogen oxides. In May, the Department of Justice sued Fiat Chrysler Automobiles for allegedly programming about 100,000 Jeep SUVs and Ram pickup trucks to hold back emissions just long enough to pass the standard Environmental Protection Agency tests. Fiat Chrysler has denied doing anything illegal.

General Motors faces a class action suit, filed in May, that accuses the company of rigging some of its large pickups to cheat on emissions tests. GM calls the allegations baseless. Even Daimler, the maker of Mercedes-Benz cars synonymous with German engineering prowess, is under investigation for possible emissions cheating in Germany and the United States.

These automakers are unlikely to suffer the same financial damage as Volkswagen, which between 2009 and 2015 sold 11 million cars equipped with illegal, emissions-cloaking software, then compounded its sins with a blitz of false advertising. But fines and settlements could easily amount to billions of dollars they need to be spending on research and development. Moreover, these scandals make the carmakers look like polluting dinosaurs of the past, not purveyors of exciting new technology.

Even carmakers not swept up in the diesel scandals are vulnerable. They tend to operate on thin profit margins—Fiat Chrysler’s return on sales in 2016 was less than 2 percent. Google, which is preparing to bring autonomous vehicles to market, is worth more than three times as much on the stock market as all the German carmakers combined. In April, Tesla’s market capitalization surpassed Ford’s. Investors have made it very clear who they think owns the future.

Output: Car makers including Fiat Chrysler, General Motors and Daimler could suffer in the long-term from scandals surrounding the use of software to manipulate diesel car emissions levels, according to Jack Ewing, European economics correspondent for the New York Times. He cited how Volkswagen's emissions scandal has so far cost $22bn in the US alone, and said that while disruptive firms like Tesla find innovative ways to mass-produce electric cars, diesel sales will wane because of pollution concerns and the rise of automated driving and car-sharing.


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Researchers develop nanoparticle coating to remove oil from water
 AkzoNobel receives approval to supply its water-based refinish products to Porsche China, currently one of the premium automotive brand’s biggest markets. The company will supply its full...

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Output: University of Texas at Austin researchers have developed an advanced method of separating oil from water, inspired by the adaptability of magnetic nanoparticles. Scientists applied a polymer coating to nanoparticles, which can attach to oil droplets through electrostatic force. They believe their technique could be used to reduce the ecological impact of oil production and make clean-up operations more efficient, as well as to treat the millions of gallons of water used in hydraulic fracturing. It could also be applied to drinking water to rid it of contaminants.


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Porsche determined to prosper in era of EVs and autonomous cars
 Although "The Origin of Species" was written more than 150 years ago, Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection never had more meaning for Oliver Blume than today. Porsche's 49-year-old CEO seems to have made biology compulsory reading for his management team as part of his strategy for 2025. The sports-car maker views the future as a matter of survival or extinction following a "Big Bang," Porsche's term for the digital revolution that has already spawned new competitors and business models. Referencing writings on evolution, its IT head Sven Lorenz said: "It's not the strongest species that survive but the ones most able to adapt."

Porsche's alarmist language is fitting: investors seem to believe carmakers are facing a doomsday scenario, the proverbial dinosaurs staring up at the oncoming meteor. "There's nothing cheaper in terms of quality blue chips in global equity markets than the OEMs, including the Germans. They are at recession-low valuation levels," analyst Arndt Ellinghorst of Evercore ISI said. Only Toyota, Volkswagen and Daimler are worth more than electric car maker Tesla.

While it's now considered a must for industry executives to discuss the inherent and substantial risks stemming from technological disruption, few paint as bleak a picture as Porsche. This is surprising given the carmaker appears more immune than most to megatrends such as shared mobility, electric vehicles and autonomous driving. Not only does its 911 remain the global benchmark for luxury performance coupes, the company's finances are rock solid. Porsche's operating profit last year had never been higher and its 17 percent return on sales was second only to Ferrari's 19 percent in 2016.

Porsche also surpassed its 200,000-unit-a-year sales target in 2015 -- three years ahead of plan. Last year's total was a record 237,778 vehicles. To reach that level of volume, Porsche has had to add mainstream vehicles that some purists disdain. The brand, however, has proved flexible enough to make additions such as the Macan midsize SUV and its first station wagon, the Panamera Sport Turismo, without sacrificing "emotional sportiness," as Blume calls it.

Too much success?

On the other hand, Porsche's success is arguably also its greatest weakness. Thus far, the brand has defined itself as a carmaker that sells gasoline-powered dreams on four wheels. Mashing the pedal and hearing the howl of the company's trademark boxer engine isn't enough, so it's no surprise then that Porsche fans already cried out when the smaller 718 model was downsized from six cylinders to just four. Moreover, one design element common to every Porsche ever built is a central instrument cluster dominated not by a speedometer but an analog rev counter. How does one mimic these traits in a whisper-quiet electric car?

"Porsche is done, conceptually" said Tesla owner Hasso Plattner, who is chairman and founder of German software giant SAP.

Unable to ignore oncoming megatrends, Blume and his team believe that pulling all the usual levers to improve Porsche's business – making everything a bit lighter, a bit quicker or a bit more affordable – simply won't be enough. Without questioning the fundamentals, a company will end up ceding any mantle as an innovator to its competitors. "To a degree, carmakers will have to become internet companies and turn the tables on companies such as Google that are encroaching into our territory," Porsche Chief Financial Officer and Deputy CEO Lutz Meschke told reporters, arguing only those that adapt by monetizing customer data will still succeed in the future. Citing the power that information wields, Porsche says Facebook can understand an individual better than a colleague with just 20 likes; after 300, though, its algorithms can already describe that person better than their own partner.

'On the scrap heap'

One company manager intimately acquainted with the tech world is Thilo Koslowski, who was appointed head of Porsche Digital last year. The Silicon Valley veteran, who founded the automotive practice of IT research firm Gartner in 1997, believes digitalization offers the industry a unique chance to put the car back into the center of life -- if they grab it. Otherwise the car risks becoming "a product seen as no longer relevant that belongs on the scrap heap," he told industry executives at a conference in Berlin in April. The ultimate goal is to become a platform provider that generates revenue growth beyond the traditional car, for example, by teaming up with consumer goods manufacturers. Koslowski also sees several possibilities stemming from the carmaker's owner clubs, such as easily sharing videos of driving experiences digitally. Ultimately, he believes either a carmaker offers an aspirational ownership experience or it become just another run-of-the-mill mobility provider competing on cost. "There is no in between," Koslowski said, "since then you will be left behind – and there will be companies that are left behind, a whole bunch."

Overlooking the placid waters of the Spree River in Berlin's trendy district of Friedrichshain, Porsche Lab workers move in and out of loosely arranged "scrums." A small team of 14 employees headed by Boris Behring tests the feasibility of technological innovations such as Blockchain for Porsche's business. Coaching is the philosophy here, not management, and the goal is a cross-pollination with the city's thriving startup scene. Two people working at the communal tables were from one of several new mobility companies in Germany's capital.

During a tour earlier this year, Meschke said the lab served as an incubator passing on ideas that prove promising to Koslowski's Porsche Digital, which then creates concrete customer applications and business ideas. Speed here is a necessity. Developers are told not to wait to work out all the bugs, but test possible services on the market once they are 80 percent finished. For Porsche engineers trained not to introduce an innovation until it has been fully vetted, this idea verges on blasphemy. In the digital economy, however, apps often have a shelf life of weeks.

According to the CFO, the industry has little choice but to look for growth opportunities elsewhere once self-driving cars dramatically increase vehicle utilization rates. "Today it's 5 percent, but [soon] we will be talking over 70 percent to 80 percent efficiency," the CFO said. "That means we will need far fewer cars, so automatically the growth in vehicle sales is limited."

To compensate for the loss of volume, he said more than 30 percent of revenue in the future would have to be generated from new businesses. Normally, Porsche only refers to a target of double-digit share of sales, but the CFO was a lot more forthcoming during the day of the tour. When asked why Meschke deviated from the usual talking points, a Porsche official said: "It's a wake-up call. We need new ideas."

As a result, Porsche is enlisting the help of trend scouts at venture capital firms such as Israel's Magma and e-Ventures, which specialize in providing seed funds to startups before a bank would risk extending a loan. If successful, there is an option for the carmaker to acquire a strategic holding as part of an exit by its venture capital partners. One recent example was Porsche Digital's investment in a German parking solutions startup that will provide the base upon which Porsche plans to establish an ecosystem of services.

Output: German carmaker Porsche, which is set to begin production of its first electric vehicle (EV), the Mission E, in 2019, could weather the oncoming storm of EVs and autonomous driving thanks to its ability to adapt and find new forms of business, according to Automotive News Europe. The company, which has set out its ecological targets for the first time, could look to digitalisation to ensure it generates growth through strategies that go beyond being a traditional car provider.


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Shell to develop carbon-negative fuel after SBI deal
 If you think about it, the world of combustion engines could really use a carbon-negative story that goes father than electric cars and their entirely mythic but potent “zero emissions” storyline.

Shell might have just won that race.

Yep, they’re going carbon negative. Petroleum fuels emit 94 grams of CO2 per megajoule of energy. Shell’s latest deal with SBI Bioenergy gives it access to a fuel that emits Minus 14.

That means the atmosphere gets less carbon, with every mile you drive. You motor your way to a global emissions solution.

And, offering something that electric vehicles never will — a technology that claws us back from the carbon precipice instead of a technology class that lets us dangle there forever.

A Shell Turned Upside Down

It may be very apt that Shell is at the forefront, because not long ago the company re-organized and established its NewFuels entity, within which fits all its ambitions, including biofuels and hydrogen (and especially into the California market), and also put under one big umbrella all its interests in electric mobility, a renewed interest in solar and its new-found aggressive interest in offshore wind.

And the company has remained on the advanced biofuels warpath when others have blinked or gone elsewhere. As Shell’s EVP for alt energy Matthew Tipper told The Digest not long ago, “We will likely begin manufacture in the southeast United States. We plan to be operational by late this decade. Importantly, advanced biofuels could ultimately supply a significant part, perhaps all, of Europe’s transport fuels needs. So we have big plans. We have a credible vision.”

The SBI bombshell

Into that mix arrived a bombshell last week. As we reported here, Shell acquired exclusive development and licensing rights for SBI BioEnergy’s biofuel technology. Edmonton-based SBI has a patented process that can convert a wide range of waste oils, greases and sustainable vegetable oils into lower carbon drop-ins for diesel, jet fuel and gasoline.

“SBI has a promising new Canadian biofuels technology,” says Andrew Murfin, General Manager, Advanced Biofuels for Shell. “This is a great opportunity for us to combine Shell’s innovation and commercialization capabilities with SBI’s technical expertise to investigate the potential this technology has for commercial application.”

Why not before?

The technological breakthrough is that SBI uses a continuous catalytic process, called PICFTR. That stands for Process Intensifying Continuous Flow-Through Reaction, but we call it PickFooter. PickFooter was originally developed for production of advanced pharmaceuticals and fine chemical intermediates.

What are the advantages there? Think 7.

1. Improved Kinetics. Reduces reaction time from hours to seconds by influencing reaction kinetics.

2. Improved Fuel Quality and Yield .

3. Handling of Energetic Exothermic Reactions: PICFTR can handle highly energetic reactions that are simply not possible on commercial scale in batch.

4. Ease of Scalability. Pickfooter has a smaller physical footprint and the ability to quickly scale-up with much lower risk.

5. Reduced Energy Consumption: PICFTR technology can operate with highly concentrated reactants that reduce energy consumption by up to 30%.

6. Reduced Costs. PICFTR provides several-fold cost reduction compared with current manufacturing techniques due to lower initial capital expenditures. For one, it does not need to purchase hydrogen, incorporate expensive hydrogen safety features, consume water or chemicals, or build a large physical plant. Furthermore, SBI’s proprietary catalysts, called “Continuous Green Catalysts” (CGC), are inexpensive, have a long active life, and are easy to rejuvenate.

7. Improved Safety and Environmental Impact. With the reduction in quantities of reactants at any given moment to almost minuscule levels, various risks that affect the scalability of sensitive reactions are virtually eliminated.

How feedstock flexible?

The secret of carbon negativity is in the feedstock, which is waste fat, oil or grease. These have traditionally been made into biodiesel or batch renewable diesel. Here. it can be made into drop-in renewable gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.

SBI plans to source feedstock from local suppliers of vegetable oils or animal fats. SBI would like to eventually use vegetable oils from non-food oilseed crops such as carinata or camelina when these crops become commercially available. Other feedstock sources for its process include tall oil from pulp and paper mills or biodiesel from existing manufacturers.

The SBI backstory

We reported in March 2016 that SBI was preparing to open its drop-in renewable diesel and aviation jet fuel facility later that year. The demo facility near Edmonton will produce 10 million liters annually, which will be commissioned by year’s end, while a C$20 million commercial scale facility would be online by 2018 producing 240 million liters annually, the company said at the time.

Under the agreement, Shell and SBI will work together to demonstrate the potential of the technology and, if successful, scale up for commercial application.

“We are confident that Shell is the right industry partner to commercialize our low carbon intensity renewable fuel process,” says Inder Singh, SBI’s Founding President & CEO. “Working with Shell means that we have a partner with proven capabilities to investigate the potential this technology has for global application and that is something that is very exciting for us.”

Shell’s bustin’ a move

After all, “end of the decade” is right around the corner, when we think about building commercial-scale plants and commissioning them. And as Shell’s Andrew Murfin told The Digest, “As an industry we need to try and get something moving forward, and second plants coming along, so as we get closer to market, we want to see technologies with shorter gestation periods.”

So it’s not just about building first commercials. It’s about the Nth plant.

What’s come together besides technology?

Some of it is California, some of it is the wrenching re-organization of thinking at energy majors, partly due to catastrophically low fuel prices.

“What’s happened in California,” Murfin said, “is that you have better transparency and the targets have been restated, so it starts to have many of the features of the RFS, and we like the certainty of the RFS around advanced biofuels. The LCFS is even more transparent.”

“As with many more majors,” Murfin notes, “we’re very well tuned in to the energy transition, but it is really about how we position ourselves in that new world, and how we organize with real drive rather than a couple of sprints. This is all about how to put renewables into a serious business for the long term. We continue to look to create a global low-carbon business, even with the expected large impact of electrification, we see that heavy-duty will be liquid, and that represents a long-term opportunity.

“We see the space, and ourselves, as having been technology constrained. We have the feedstock, and we have the infrastructure, but we haven’t had the technology. That’s why we’ve been working on ethanol and drop-ins, as with our small-scale pilot cellulosic plant in Houston that we completed in 2015, and the feedstock trials we’ve been involved in in Texas and Arkansas, looking at improving storage among other aspects. And we also have the Raizen JV and the cellulosic plant, and we’ve seen the progress with the Iogen technology and we are learning from that on feedstock and materials handling.”

Shell’s other work continues

“In terms of drop-ins, we continue to develop a program out of Virent,” Murfin confirmed, “And the other tech is the IH2 technology, that comes in via CRI, and again there is a demo plant being built at our facility in Bangalore, similar to Houston, at a 5-ton per day scale and we’ll see how that fares. And, we’re also talking to partners, where it makes sense.”

And that’s SBI, right there in the “Department of It Makes Sense.”

We might have seen an announce earlier, but Shell put a ton of resources into looking at the Abengoa cellulosic ethanol project site, not long ago.

“The Abengoa site really presented for us as a site where we could have focus for our activities, and benefit from low-cost infrastructure and process. It just didn’t come to pass. We did a tremendous amount of work, soup to nuts on that technology and agreements, and at the end of the day we just had a different view on value, and others saw a higher valuation that we did.

The Bottom Line

The technology has been demonstrated at a small-scale, so in many ways this is a scale-up deal to get Shell into the Renewable Diesel business. Think Heavy Duty; for sure, Shell is.

We see a commercial project happening this decade.

Output: Shell's acquisition of exclusive development and licensing rights for SBI BioEnergy's biofuel technology has given the energy company access to a fuel that captures 14 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of energy, compared with petroleum's 94 grams of CO2 emissions. SBI's technology converts waste oils, greases and sustainable vegetable oil into biofuels. Although the technology has only been demonstrated at a small scale, Shell plans to manufacture the biofuel "late this decade". Shell recently established its NewFuels entity, which seeks to streamline its interests in electric mobility, solar, offshore wind and hydrogen combustion, as well as biofuels.


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Chinese investors fall victim to ether-stealing virus
 An ICO investor reported June 29 he fell victim to a scam in which he was led to believe a startup is doing an ICO project. Alex said he received a zip file with detailed information about the project and found his 80,000 yuan worth of ETH disappeared the next day.

The conman whose QQ number is 45295299 added Alex this Thursday claiming that he is working on an ICO project and wishes Alex to help check the whitepaper.

He said something nice about Alex and asked him to support his project. The criminal promised Alex that if everything worked out fine, he could get some kickback.

Alex took the bait. He received a zip file detailing everything he needs to know about the project.

When he was about to give some feedback on the whitepaper this morning, he was shocked to find that he lost 80,000 yuan worth of ETH.

The worst is yet to come. Alex searched the QQ number on Baidu and realized that the crook had been asking questions about how to bypass an antivirus on several hacker forums.

An antivirus works to detect viruses through two main ways, signature based detection and suspicious behavior. To cheat an antivirus, it involves a lot of encoding work. You can learn about about it at semantic:http://www.secmaniac.com/blog/2010/02/24/set-v0-4-1-rise-of-the-pink-pirate/

When Alex shared his story in an ICO group, he was surprised to hear that he was not the only victim. Some investors lost 180,000 yuan and some at least 1 million yuan. Now Alex has reported it to the police.

These victims all received an ICO file and the antivirus failed to detect some malware in it.

They read the whitepaper all night long in hopes of giving some useful advice and expected to get some rewards. But there is no such a thing called “Read my whitepaper, I’ll pay you.”

Tan Guopeng, founder of bitbill, said this morning that one of his colleagues lost all of his cryptocurrencies. He has been using imToken wallet and his assets were transferred last night without his knowledge. He is now talking with the company to see if there is any way to get his assets back.

Output: Chinese investors are unwittingly downloading a virus that steals ether coins by opening a zip file that supposedly gives details about an initial coin offering white paper. Individual investors have lost up to CNY1m ($147,000) as the virus is able to bypass antivirus systems.


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Self-driving cars could transform the lives of disabled people
 A Road to Helping People with Disabilities

Autonomous vehicles have the potential to revolutionize travel, but there is one segment of society, who have so far been overlooked, that they could greatly benefit: people with disabilities. Driverless cars, according to a report by the Ruderman Foundation "offer significant potential for reducing transportation obstacles for Americans with disabilities."

The report is divided into subsections that make suggestions for specific disabilities. For the deaf community, it states that visual cues and instruction capabilities would be helpful. Intellectual and developmental disabilities could be provided for by creating a means of operation with minimal complexity, and caretakers for those with these disabilities could ensure their safety if tools such as GPS tracking and remotely accessible video cameras were provided.

For those with physical disabilities, the priority is to make the vehicle accessible, which an automatic ramp could do. A Siri-esque, voice-controlled communication system between car and driver would help them operate the vehicle once they are inside.

In order to benefit the disabled community to the maximum degree possible, solutions such as these will have to be designed and integrated "as early as possible in the design and manufacturing process," according to the report. If not, the disabled community may face clumsy, expensive, and inefficient solutions when fighting for back-end accessibility.

Helping the Economy by Helping Millions

In 2015, statistics from the CDC showed that one in every five American adults has a disability; they also wrote that because of their data source, this number was likely underestimated. Designing driverless cars that accommodate this community therefore has the potential to help more than 22% of the population. Getting from point A to B independently is a huge problem for many people in the community, and therefore designing autonomous cars with disabled people in mind would not only increase their travel situation, but quality of life in general.

While public transport provides a partial solution to travel for people with disabilities, driverless cars could represent a huge step forward for accessibility and independence — and in the process rectify the imbalance of opportunity, wage, and education that those with disabilities face. This would be beneficial not only to individuals, but to the US economy as a whole, because it would decrease the rate of unemployment and the market failure caused by immobility of labor.

While the future of driverless cars looks bright and exciting — with companies like Mercedes making sports car versions and stories such as autonomous vehicles preventing traffic jams becoming more common — perhaps car manufacturers should instead focus on the opportunity of improving the living standards of nearly one in every five Americans. If driverless cars are a revolution, let them be a revolution for all of us.

Output: Self-driving vehicles could help transform the lives of those with disabilities, according to a report by the Ruderman Foundation in the US. Autonomous cars offer "significant potential for reducing transportation obstacles" for those with disabilities, the report said. For those with hearing problems, visual cues would be helpful, while those with developmental disabilities could be aided by control systems that involved minimal complexity. Meanwhile, those with physical disabilities could benefit from more accessible vehicles, with automatic ramps and voice-controlled communication systems. One in five Americans has a disability, according to 2015 data.


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Silicon Valley giants push for coding lessons in US classrooms
 At a White House gathering of tech titans last week, Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, delivered a blunt message to President Trump on how public schools could better serve the nation’s needs. To help solve a “huge deficit in the skills that we need today,” Mr. Cook said, the government should do its part to make sure students learn computer programming.

“Coding,” Mr. Cook told the president, “should be a requirement in every public school.”

The Apple chief’s education mandate was just the latest tech company push for coding courses in schools. But even without Mr. Trump’s support, Silicon Valley is already advancing that agenda — thanks largely to the marketing prowess of Code.org, an industry-backed nonprofit group.

Output: Companies including tech giant Apple and industry-backed not-for-profit Code.org are working to introduce coding into US school curriculums. Last month, Apple introduced a year-long curriculum for high schools and community colleges to teach app design in Swift. More recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook told President Donald Trump the US government should ensure students learn computer programming to address a skills deficit in coding. Meanwhile, Code has raised more than $60m from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Salesforce to press for education policy changes, build curriculums, provide online coding tutorials and train teachers.


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Most insurers fear insurtech start-ups will eat into revenues: PwC
 PwC says insurers' perception of InsurTech has changed over the last year.

More than half of insurers (56%) are worried that up to 20% of their revenue is at risk to InsurTech start-ups, according to PwC’s 2017 Global Fintech survey.

The report showed 10% believe that more than 40% of business could be lost.

Overall, over eight in ten (86%) of the insurers surveyed were concerned about losing revenue to InsurTech players, with 52% saying that innovation is at the heart of their strategy.

PwC did note in the report that the pace of change in insurance is accelerating

Output: One in 10 insurers believe they could lose up to 40% of their business to insurtech start-ups, and more than half fear they could lose up to 20%, according to PwC's 2017 Global Fintech survey. It found 86% of insurers worried about losing revenue to insurtech firms, and 84% planned to invest in data analytics in the coming months. The survey also revealed almost 90% of insurance firms were struggling to hire or keep staff with the right skills to innovate.


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FDA approves gene-based cancer test in precision medicine boost
 After decades of research and theoretical debates, it seems precision oncology is finally falling into place.

At the end of May, FDA triggered a seismic shift in the field with its decision to approve a therapy based on a genetic signature, not a tissue of origin. The ruling solidified the field’s move towards the use of biomarkers to precisely target each person’s cancer, rather than blindly administering toxic agents.

On Thursday, another big milestone was reached with FDA’s premarket approval (PMA) of the first companion diagnostic for multiple drugs, the Oncomine Dx Target Test. A PMA is the most stringent type of device marketing application required by FDA.

Developed by Thermo Fisher Scientific, the assay uses next-generation sequencing (NGS) to simultaneously screen for 23 cancer genes. Three of those genes are tied to three different FDA-approved therapies for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

And that’s just the beginning.

Via phone, Thermo Fisher’s President of Clinical NGS Joydeep Goswami noted that the regulatory work has already been done for further indications.

“While we presented evidence of analytical validation of all the different genes, given the initial companion drugs were all non-small cell lung cancer-related, the FDA chose to initially limit this approval to that patient group,” he said.

After all, it’s all new territory for the agency as well.

“It’s the first-ever multi-biomarker NGS, IVD [in vitro diagnostic], companion diagnostic that was ever approved. And also, I think for the FDA, for multiple drugs being approved for a companion diagnostic at the same time.”

The company intends to work with the FDA to get more genes added to the panel, more companion therapies matched, and more indications for use in different tissues. At least one other company, Foundation Medicine, is working on a multi-biomarker, multi-drug companion test.

Lung cancer is a good starting point for a number of reasons: The genes are actionable, the samples are hard to collect, and time is of the essence.

With this NGS test, the sample requirement is very small and it delivers results in a matter of days, Goswami said. That compares to the single biomarker, sequential testing techniques using PCR or IHC, which take weeks and use a large amount of sample with each test. Oncologists don’t want to go back for more.

“The cost of a lung biopsy, at the best of times, is somewhere in the $5,000-$20,000 range,” Goswami explained. “But if there are complications, which is often the case with compromised patients, it can go up to $40,000 or more.”

Perhaps more importantly, the procedure is an immense burden on already sick patients, he stated.

The companion therapies are made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Novartis. The latter also received approval for its combination therapy on Thursday, in concert with the approval of the Oncomine Dx Target Test. FDA noted both in its announcement.

For Goswami, the greatest advantage of a companion diagnostic tied to multiple drugs is its ability to democratize access to precision medicine.

When FDA announced its approval of Keytruda for a biomarker, it incited a lot of debate about the number of patients that were getting their tumors sequenced. As it stands, an NSCLC patient at a top academic institution, such as Mayo Clinic, will likely get the tests required to confirm their eligibility for all the approved therapies or clinical trials. Yet these are laboratory-developed tests (LDTs), which are tied to a single clinical location.

The Oncomine Dx Target Test will be available nationwide; LabCorp’s Diagnostics and Covance Businesses, NeoGenomics Laboratories, and Cancer Genetics have all signed up as early adopters.

“I don’t see why any patient should not have access to this technology,” Goswami said.

Thermo will start discussions with payers and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now that the approval is finalized.

If the trend continues, biomarkers will become an increasingly important part of cancer treatment. But it’s not always a one-to-one equation. These mutations are often actionable in unexpected ways.

Take, for example, Merck’s flagship immunotherapy Keytruda. In an early June interview, Merck’s SVP, Head of Global Clinical Development, and CMO Roy Baynes said the company is currently taking a four-pronged approach to its diagnostics. The first is testing for PDL-1, the biomarker that the drug targets and binds. The next is testing for inflammatory signals more broadly. The third is looking for tumors that are MSI-high, the mutation tied to the landmark FDA approval. And finally, there is evidence to suggest that a broadly high tumor mutational burden correlates with a response to checkpoint inhibitors such as Keytruda.

If physicians only tested for PDL-1, they wouldn’t be maximizing the drug’s potential.

It’s a reminder that we need to cast the net as wide as possible for potential mutations, in all patients.

Photo: Nataniil, Getty Images

Output: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given pre-market approval to the Oncomine Dx Target Test, which simultaneously identifies 23 cancer genes, potentially lowering the cost of diagnosis and access to gene-based therapies. Three of the genes have matching FDA-approved therapies for non-small cell lung cancer. Test-creator Thermo Fisher plans to work with the FDA to get more genes approved.


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ITV to begin ad-free subscription service in the UK
 ITV is taking a page out of the Netflix playbook.

The commercial broadcaster has quietly run an ad-free version of its ITV Hub player for the last seven months and is now ready to shout about it. A nationwide campaign will generate noise for the service, which costs £3.99 ($5.19) per month. The bet: ITV must better monetize its content in response to the rise of commercial-free rivals like Netflix, over-the-top services it has helped grow by licensing popular shows to them. Ad revenues for the broadcaster suffered their first drop in seven years last year, slipping 3 percent to £1.7 billion ($2.2 billion), highlighting just how fragmented viewing habits are now.

“Paid TV has been around for 20 years or so in the U.K., and the interesting question for SVOD services is to what extent can they start penetrating those homes that don’t have pay TV, which is around 50 percent of the country,” said Paul Kanareck, ITV group director for online. “A lot of the evidence suggests that the best way to get people to pay is to find those who already pay [for SVOD services]. What you see from a lot of Netflix subscribers is that they’re already Sky subscribers.”

In the six months since ITV Hub+ launched, two key trends have emerged: The first is a significant number of viewers are using the service to catch up on their favorite soap operas without the ad interruptions, and the second — and probably more revealing — is the seasonal spikes of people subscribing to watch high-profile dramas such as “Broadchurch” or “Downton Abbey” before ditching the service once they’ve completed a show. If a large chunk of subscribers are “seasonal,” then different pricing models could be a way of making ITV Hub+ more appealing to more people. He envisions the service evolving over the coming weeks and months with the introduction of various passes such as seasonal passes, program passes, day passes and more.

Plans are also afoot to gauge whether the service should introduce exclusive promotions, such as show previews, to those who pay.

It would be “interesting to see whether those people realize they can get a lot of content for free and then add on a bit of subscription money on top,” Kanareck mused on whether skinny bundles could reinvent the TV model within the IP space.

For all his optimism for ITV Hub+, Kanareck doesn’t expect it to be “truly mass market.” It’s why, when asked whether he felt the SVOD player could become a threat to the bigger ITV Hub business, he was relaxed. ITV Hub+ would have to get to a “serious number of users” to start having an impact on ITV Hub’s ad sales and ad load capacities, he explained. Many broadcasters hesitant to push their shows across multiple platforms share that fear of content online slowly eroding linear TV audiences, and consequently, advertising revenues.

However, putting live TV at the heart of its online proposition is ITV’s gamble in the wider tussle for eyeballs that has taken it from the main screen in the home to multiple screens on the road to date and will soon return to that main TV screen. Except this time, the TV is connected, which already accounts for the biggest share of the 20 million people viewing shows on ITV Hub. Four in 10 of those viewers are watching ITV’s live broadcasts via the online player as household penetration of smart TVs is tipped to hit relative parity, with streaming media players as platforms delivering apps to TVs by 2020, according to market research firm NPD.

The proliferation of these devices means “ITV is going to look a lot more like ITV Hub in five years time,” said Kanareck. “Video on demand is becoming more of a communal family experience as opposed to a one-on-one experience with mobile, and it means it’s starting to enter the living room, which is where ITV does best, when it’s providing family viewing.”

It’s too early to know what it will look like, but ITV’s overhaul will see the definition of broadcast TV change to one that’s reflective of how people will be able to curate and consume content the way they want.

Personalized homepages are due on ITV Hub in the coming weeks, meaning registered users will only see the shows they like. The broadcaster is also in the early stages of allowing advertisers to target ITV Hub viewers by household, i.e, addressable TV. Kanareck was coy on the development, though he did have this to say: “I suspect where we’ll end up is offering advertisers a lot more choice about how they want to buy TV just like we’re giving viewers more choice about how they watch TV.”

Output: ITV is launching an ad-free subscription service for its Hub player, which will cost £3.99 per month. The new service is a bid to better monetise its digital content as ad revenues for the business have dropped 3% to reach £1.7bn. With paid digital television services being relatively ubiquitous, the service is predicted to generate interest from those already using the free version.


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The Doctors Laboratory concedes couriers are workers
 Couriers carrying emergency blood supplies and delivering passports have won improved employment rights in an important concession for workers in the gig economy.

The Doctors Laboratory, a company which provides pathology services to the NHS, has admitted that five cyclists, motorcyclists and van drivers carrying emergency blood supplies to hospitals and samples to laboratories, are not self-employed.

The company now concedes that the couriers, who are on a variety of different contracts, are workers, an official employment classification which entitles them to rights including holiday pay and a minimum wage. Self-employed contractors, who make the vast majority of drivers and riders in the courier and delivery industry, have no employment rights, beyond basic health and safety and anti-discrimination rules.

The firm, which is understand to employ more than 70 couriers, who are a mix of car drivers, motorcyclists and cyclists, would not confirm when or if it would be repaying holiday pay owed to the five workers.

“TDL is mindful of doing the right thing but as the case is ongoing we are unable to provide further comment at this time,” the company said.

TDL’s admission comes after a similar move by eCourier, a subsidiary of Royal Mail, which last month admitted it had wrongly classified one of its couriers as a self-employed contractor. It is now carrying out a review to work out how best to switch staff to worker status where it reflects their working arrangements. Both admissions came after legal action backed by the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain.

Other tribunals against taxi-hailing app Uber and courier firm CitySprint also both successfully argued drivers were officially “workers”.

Uber, which has 40,000 drivers in the UK, will appeal against the employment tribunal verdict in September. CitySprint has also launched an appeal after losing a similar case.

Jason Moyer-Lee, general secretary of IWGB, said: “Looking at how these cases have progressed in the past year and a half, there’s momentum for real change happening. Worker status in an inevitability in the gig economy. It is like dominoes falling.”

He said the IWGB would continue to pursue its case against TDL because the couriers argue they are employees – an even more secure classification than worker.

Employees have guaranteed additional benefits including sick pay and maternity leave as well as protection against unfair dismissal, statutory redundancy pay and the right to request flexible working.

Moyer-Lee said: “TDL’s recent admission of unlawful behaviour is further evidence that there has been widespread and rampant denial of employment rights with no consequence. But also that worker status is inevitable once these companies are challenged.

“In TDL’s case however worker status is not good enough, these couriers are employees. TDL would be wise to admit to the full extent of its behaviour and not try to weasel out of the situation on the cheap.”

The case will be heard between 13 and 16 November 2017.

Output: The Doctors Laboratory (TDL), a delivery company providing pathology services to the NHS, has conceded that five of its couriers are not self-employed in an admission that carries potential implications for gig economy workers. The firm, which employs over 70 couriers, has stated that individuals on a range of different contracts are workers, meaning that they are entitled to rights including the minimum wage and holiday pay. Last month, eCourier, a Royal Mail subsidiary, also admitted that hundreds of its couriers were wrongly classified as self-employed.


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Cyber insurance may not cover fines for data protection breaches
 Companies banking on cyber insurance to protect themselves against the harsh penalties due under GDPR could be in for a shock, amid claims that many legal firms believe that the monetary penalties will be impossible to cover.

According to CFC Underwriting, the ‘fear factor’ of a costly cyber attack drove UK adoption of cyber insurance up 50% in 2016 and globally the market is currently worth over $2.5bn – a figure which is expected to rise significantly as firms wake up to the reality of life under GDPR.

But a panel discussion on cyber risk held at the Reactions London Market Re/Insurance Conference, heard there are still considerable “grey areas” about using insurance for GDPR fines.

Under new regime, there will be a two-tiered sanction regime. Lesser incidents will be subject to a maximum fine of either €10m (£7.9m) or 2% of an organisation’s global turnover (whichever is greater), while the most serious violations could result in fines of up to €20m or 4% of turnover (whichever is greater).

Speaking at the event, Gavin Lyons, leader of the corporate account handlers at insurance giant JLT, said that privately most law firms say they think GDPR fines are uninsurable. “They’re not willing to put that in writing, of course, but they are waiting for a test case,” he added.

And Mark Camillo, head of cyber insurance in Europe at AIG and head of its CyberEdge product, agreed, citing the fact that, as criminal proceedings can be brought against those businesses affected, the insurance could be void.

Not that fines are the only thing that cyber insurance covers; most policies also include provisions for crisis management, such as expenses related to the management of an incident, the investigation, the remediation, data subject notification, call management, credit checking for data subjects, and legal costs.

They also cover third-party damages, including defacement of website and intellectual property rights infringement, extortion liability cover, and network security liability.

However, there is also the matter of how much insurance firms are willing to cover; according to Camillo the largest standalone cyber policy placed by AIG in Europe currently has a £400m limit, a figure which would not even scratch the surface of the costs for some multinationals which have global turnovers of tens of billions of pounds.

For instance, the recent data breach at The Hutchison Whampoa-owned Three Mobile, could have triggered an eye-watering fine of $2.2bn (£1.8bn) based on its parent company’s global turnover of $53bn (£43bn).

Related stories

Three would face whopping £1.8bn fine under GDPR

TalkTalk could have faced £70m fine under GDPR

John Lewis and HSBC slam ‘ambiguous’ GDPR guidance

Lack of GDPR guidance fuels fears over bombardment

GDPR countdown fuels warning of 4,500% rise in fines

84% of UK SMEs have still not heard of EU data reforms

Output: The penalties laid out in the EU's forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may mean some fines will not be covered by cybercrime insurance policies, according to experts at the Reactions London Market Re/Insurance Conference. The GDPR system has two tiers of financial penalty and some law firms have said privately GDPR fines may be uninsurable, according to Gavin Lyons, leader of the corporate account handlers at insurance giant JLT. "They’re not willing to put that in writing, but they are waiting for a test case," Lyons said.


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Portugal's top football team embraces AI to give players edge
 S.L. Benfica—Portugal's top football team and one of the best teams in the world—makes as much money from carefully nurturing, training, and selling players as actually playing football. Football teams have always sold and traded players, of course, but Sport Lisboa e Benfica has turned it into an art form: buying young talent; using advanced technology, data science, and training to improve their health and performance; and then selling them for tens of millions of pounds—sometimes as much as 10 or 20 times the original fee.

Let me give you a few examples. Benfica signed 17-year-old Jan Oblak in 2010 for €1.7 million; in 2014, as he blossomed into one of the best goalies in the world, Atlético Madrid picked him up for a cool €16 million. In 2007 David Luiz joined Benfica for €1.5 million; just four years later, Luiz was traded to Chelsea for €25 million and player Nemanja Matic. Then, three years after that, Matic returned to Chelsea for another €25 million. All told, S.L. Benfica raised more than £270 million (€320m) from player transfers over the last six years.

At Benfica's Caixa Futebol Campus there are seven grass pitches, two artificial fields, an indoor test lab, and accommodation for 65 youth team members. With three top-level football teams (SL Benfica, SL Benfica B, and SL Benfica Juniors) and other youth levels below that, there are over 100 players actively training at the campus—and almost every aspect of their lives is tracked, analysed, and improved by technology. How much they eat and sleep, how fast they run, tire, and recover, their mental health—everything is ingested into a giant data lake.

With machine learning and predictive analytics running on Microsoft Azure, combined with Benfica's expert data scientists and the learned experience of the trainers, each player receives a personalised training regime where weaknesses are ironed out, strengths enhanced, and the chance of injury significantly reduced.

Sensors, lots of sensors

Before any kind of analysis can occur, Benfica has to gather lots and lots of data—mostly from sensors, but some data points (psychology, diet) have to be surveyed manually. Because small, low-power sensors are a relatively new area with lots of competition, there's very little standardisation to speak of: every sensor (or sensor system) uses its own wireless protocol or file format. "Hundreds of thousands" of data points are collected from a single match or training session.

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Processing all of that data wouldn't be so bad if there were just three or four different sensors, but we counted almost a dozen disparate systems—Datatrax for match day tracking, Prozone, Philips Actiware biosensors, StatSports GPS tracking, OptoGait gait analysis, Biodex physiotherapy machines, the list goes on—and each one outputs data in a different format, or has to be connected to its own proprietary base station.

Benfica uses a custom middleware layer that sanitises the output from each sensor into a single format (yes, XKCD 927 is in full force here). The sanitised data is then ingested into a giant SQL data lake hosted on the team's own data centre. There might even be a few Excel spreadsheets along the way, Benfica's chief information officer Joao Copeto tells Ars—"they exist in every club," he says with a laugh—but they are in the process of moving everything to the cloud with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Azure.

Once everything is floating around in the data lake, maintaining the security and privacy of that data is very important. "Access to the data is segregated, to protect confidentiality," says Copeto. "Detailed information is only available to a very restricted group of professionals." Benfica's data scientists, which are mostly interested in patterns in the data, only have access to anonymised player data—they can see the player's position, but not much else.

Players have full access to their own data, which they can compare to team or position averages, to see how they're doing in the grand scheme of things. Benfica is very careful to comply with existing EU data protection laws, and is ready to embrace the even-more-stringent General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR) when it comes into force in 2018.

Output: Portuguese football team S.L. Benfica are using machine learning, predictive analytics and other data science techniques to optimise the performance of its players. Data gathered from sensors on the match and training pitches, physiotherapy machines, gait analysis devices and wearables is combined with dietary and psychological profiling to provide personalised training regimes for all members of the squad. The club is also using Microsoft's Azure Machine Learning tools to validate its complex stress and fatigue models and to build an accurate injury prediction model that can spot potential physical risks before they develop into serious problems.


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Experts call for “No Idling” zones to cut UK air pollution
 Parents who leave their car engines running at the school gate should be fined in order to help tackle the air pollution crisis, according to England’s official health watchdogs.

New guidance from Public Health England (PHE) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) sets out a wide range of measures to cut air pollution, which is at illegal levels in almost 90% of urban areas.

The health experts say children and older people are most at risk from toxic air and so “no idling” zones should be used outside schools, care homes and hospitals. Westminster city council has already introduced £80 fines for drivers caught with idling engines. Other PHE and Nice recommendations include planting more pollution-absorbing trees and hedges, training motorists to drive smoothly and to keep their tyres pumped up, and supporting cycling and electric vehicles.

The health watchdogs also back “clean air zones” that charge or restrict polluting vehicles from entering town centres. The government’s own evidence shows this is the fastest way to cut pollution, but ministers have shied away from implementing zones, fearing a backlash from motorists.

Air pollution is estimated to cause 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK, making it the biggest environmental killer. It also results in health costs of between £8.5bn and £18.6bn a year, according to PHE and Nice. The government’s plans to solve the pollution problem have twice been declared illegally poor and its latest plan in May was dismissed as “weak” and “woefully indequate”. Ministers are now being sued for a third time.

“Air pollution is a major risk to our health, and so far suggested measures have not managed to tackle the problem sufficiently,” said Prof Paul Lincoln, chair of the Nice guideline committee. “This guidance is based upon the best evidence available. It outlines a range of practical steps that local authorities can take, such as the implementation of no-idling zones, to reduce emissions and protect the public.”

Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: “These guidelines bring into sharp focus the reality that air pollution is one of our most important public health issues. We welcome the recommendations to introduce no vehicle idling areas, which will help to protect the most vulnerable in our society.”

RAC roads policy spokesman Nick Lyes said: “We welcome the principle of no-idling zones, especially outside schools, hospitals and care homes. No-one should have to suffer dirty air as a result of a driver leaving their engine on unnecessarily. Sadly, many drivers don’t realise the harm they are causing by doing this.”

Healthcare professionals should play a role in tackling Britain’s air pollution problem too, said Prof Paul Cosford, director of health protection at PHE: “They can advise individuals, particularly those who are most vulnerable, on how to reduce the personal impact of air pollution – for example, by reducing strenuous activity when air pollution is high and by using less polluted routes in towns and cities.”

Output: “No idling” zones where drivers leaving car engines running are fined should be introduced according to Public Health England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Such zones should be implemented outside care homes, hospitals and schools to reflect the fact that children and old people are most vulnerable to toxic air. Westminster city council has already introduced £80 fines for idling engines. Other recommendations include greater planting of trees and hedges, support for cycling and electric cars and “clean air zones” that limit polluting vehicles. Almost 90% of UK urban areas have illegal levels of air pollution.


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Pollution weighs on solar power generation capacity in India
 Dirty air is choking India’s quest for clean energy.

High levels of environmental pollutants and dust in northern India are expected to reduce the region’s solar power generation capacity by around 17%, a new study published in the Environmental Science & Technology Letters journal says. India’s northern plains are dotted with a number of heavily polluted cities, including New Delhi, which has worse air quality than almost anywhere else in the world.

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At current levels, particulate matter (PM)—either airborne or deposited on solar panels—could wipe out nearly 776 megawatt (MW) of solar power, which is more than the capacity of India’s largest solar plant.

The study was initiated after Michael Bergin, a professor at Duke University, noticed that some rooftop solar installations in India were incredibly dirty. ”I thought the dirt had to affect their efficiencies, but there weren’t any studies out there estimating the losses,” he told a university publication. “So we put together a comprehensive model to do just that.”

Along with researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bergin began collecting samples from multiple solar panels located at IIT-Gandhinagar. They found that the efficiency of the panels would improve by nearly 50% when they were cleaned after certain periods of time.

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“The partially cleaned solar panels clearly show that PM covers the panel surfaces and suggests that the coating may be influencing solar energy production,” the study noted.

When the researchers examined the deposits on the panels, they discovered a small but significant percentage of man-made pollutants, aside from dust.

These particles were responsible for roughly half of the 17% fall in solar energy production in northern India, the study estimated, with dust making up for the rest.

“The manmade particles are also small and sticky, making them much more difficult to clean off,” said Bergin, also the lead author of the study. “You might think you could just clean the solar panels more often, but the more you clean them, the higher your risk of damaging them.”

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Bergin and his team also used data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies to understand the effect of airborne and deposited particles, eventually working out a way to estimate the loss of solar energy production worldwide. “In northwestern India there are areas that experience a decrease in the annual amount of available shortwave energy for solar production by as much as ~50%,” the study reported, partly due to the presence of man-made pollutants and dust in the air.

Aside from India, the study revealed, China is the other major market where unclear air is sapping the solar energy industry. In eastern-central China, for instance, non-dust airborne particles are mostly responsible for a 17% reduction (7,400MW) in solar energy production. “China is already looking at tens of billions of dollars being lost each year, with more than 80% of that coming from losses due to pollution,” Bergin added.

For India, with its ambition of generating 100 gigawatt of solar power by 2022, the lesson is straightforward: It’s time to clear the air.

Output: Environmental pollution and dust in Northern India have an adverse effect on solar power generation capacity, and could reduce it by around 17%, Indian and US scientists have calculated. Current levels of particulate matter pollution could reduce solar power generation by 776 MW, more than the entire capacity of the largest solar plant in the country. However, cleaning solar panels regularly could improve their energy generation by nearly 50%.


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Twitter adds inventory packages to enable mobile ad targeting
 Twitter’s MoPub mobile ad exchange strengthened its targeting options with its launch Thursday of inventory packages.

Director of product marketing, brand, video and exchange Emel Mutlu described inventory packages as collections of ad inventory with shared characteristics, enabling brands to segment and target inventory and reach their targeted audiences.

Mutlu said there are currently more than 49,000 applications live on MoPub Marketplace, and she provided more color on inventory packages in a blog post:

Output: Twitter's MoPub mobile ad exchange has launched inventory packages to enable brands to segment and target ad inventory. Arranged by shared characteristics, the eight packages allow users to target inventory based on performance data or how recently it's been added to MoPub, said the company's director of product marketing, Emel Mutlu. Over the coming year, MoPub intends to provide partners with additional signals in the bid stream, private marketplace offerings and third-party partnerships, Mutlu added.


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Facebook chatbot discovery tool hits the US
 Today sees the US launch of Facebook’s bot Discovery tool, announced at F8 back in April. It allows users to find bots and businesses on Messenger. Tap on the ‘Discover’ icon on the lower right hand corner of the Messenger Home screen and you can browse by category, recently-used businesses and featured experiences.

Categories organises bots and businesses by topic. Recently-used shows the bots and businesses you recently interacted with. And Featured displays a random selection of bots that the user might want to explore.

Facebook said its goal with Discover is to ensure that experiences in Messenger are compelling, high quality and easy to find. It will also be hoping that Discover helps retain developers interest in creating bots for the Messenger platform.

Don’t forget to enter the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards. The Early Bird deadline for submissions is 22 July. More details here.

Output: Facebook has launched a tool that enables users in the US to locate bots and businesses on its Messenger app. By encouraging developers to create bots for Messenger, Facebook said it aims to develop high-quality and accessible user experiences within its platform. The feature can be triggered via the "Discover" icon on the Messenger home screen.


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MetaX completes $10m crowdsale to fund transparent ad tech system
 MetaX, a blockchain technology company driving development and adoption of open platforms for digital advertising, completed its token sale of $10 million on June 26th.

The launch sold out in one block.

The sale reached the cap of 10 million USD in 23 seconds

A total fixed supply of 1,000,000,000 adTokens were issued

MetaX and ConsenSys jointly created adChain, a blockchain-based open protocol that's programmable to the needs of the digital advertising industry. The sale will fund further product development and innovation to help streamline the $175 billion digital advertising supply chain that’s riddled with transparency issues.

Use of proceeds will go toward the advancement of product development, general administrative duties, business development/marketing, consulting, and legal.

“The adToken launch is a culmination of more than 15 months of hard work. We’ve paid attention to meticulous details in the development of this product to ensure it caters specifically to the needs of the industry we’re serving - global digital advertising,” said Ken Brook, CEO of MetaX. “This is why we also spent nearly a year in due diligence with representatives across the ecosystem and have lined up strategic industry partners, such as the Data & Marketing Association, and others to be announced in coming weeks. The overwhelming interest from the crypto community clearly demonstrates the recognition of the big problem we’re setting out to solve.”

“I’m genuinely proud of the crypto-economic game we designed to incentivize human behavior as part of the adChain registry. Lead developer Mike Goldin truly excelled in his rigorous technical development to ensure our launch went smoothly. This next year will be filled with building out decentralized infrastructure to bring about Fortune 500 adoption to the adChain protocol,” said Mark D’Agostino, managing partner at ConsenSys Enterprise.

About adToken and adChain

adChain is an open protocol on public Ethereum that allows for the building of decentralized and ad-centric applications for the $175 billion digital advertising ecosystem. The first solution of adChain is the adChain Registry, a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain which stores domain names accredited as non-fraudulent by ADT holders. ADT holders will access a token-weighted voting mechanism through a user interface to vote on whether a publisher domain is fraudulent or non-fraudulent. dApps (decentralized applications) utilizing the adChain protocol will enable advertisers and publishers to run campaigns that leverage the power of Ethereum, while maintaining the familiar user experience of legacy tools. These dApps will drive adoption across the thousands of advertisers, publishers and technology providers, in the digital advertising ecosystem.

Visit https://adtoken.com for details on the adToken (ADT) mechanism and to download the adChain white paper.

About MetaX

MetaX is a Los Angeles-based, blockchain technology company driving development and adoption of open platforms for digital advertising. MetaX uses adChain to power ad-centric applications that allow the digital advertising supply chain to coordinate in a scalable, trustworthy and secure way. To sign up for company updates, please visit: http://metax.io/.

About ConsenSys

ConsenSys is a venture production studio and custom software development consultancy building decentralized applications (dApps), enterprise solutions and developer tools for the Ethereum ecosystem. Powered by smart contracts and secured through encryption, our applications provide the benefits of transparency, auditability, and immutability that are unique to blockchain-based solutions. For more information please go to http://www.consensys.net.

Output: Los Angeles-based, blockchain technology company MetaX has raised $10m from its sale of one billion tokens, which reached its cap in 23 seconds. Working with ConsenSys, MetaX created adChain, a blockchain-based, programmable open protocol for the digital advertising industry. The funds will be used to pay for innovations and developments aimed at streamlining the opaque, $175bn digital advertising supply chain. "The overwhelming interest from the crypto community clearly demonstrates the recognition of the big problem we’re setting out to solve," said Ken Brook, CEO of MetaX.


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Social Chain becomes largest gaming publisher on Facebook
 Social Chain, the social media marketing agency, has acquired the viral gaming portfolio of Devise in a multimillion-dollar deal that it claims makes it the largest owner of gaming publishers on Facebook.

Social Chain acquires viral gaming portfolio Devise

The acquisition includes a large network of influential video game-related social media channels and websites. Devise claims to reach 1,500,000,000 people every month, and accumulate 200,000,000 views per month.

Output: Social media marketing agency Social Chain has become the largest owner of gaming publishers on Facebook, following a multimillion-dollar acquisition of Devise's viral gaming portfolio. The deal includes a huge network of video game-related social media channels and websites. Devise claims it reaches 1.5 billion people and accumulates 200 million views per month.


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US blacklists China's Bank of Dandong over North Korea ties
 U.S. sanctions on a Chinese bank aiding nuclear-armed North Korea are "extremely long overdue" and the Trump administration should also consider action against even larger banks, according to a former U.S. intelligence official.

"This is a significant step but really a first step in what should be a much more extensive program against the Chinese entities that are violating U.S. law," said Bruce Klingner, former chief of the CIA's Korea branch and now senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center.

On Thursday, the Treasury Department designated China's Bank of Dandong to be a "primary money laundering concern." It said the small bank "acts as a conduit for illicit North Korean financial activity." Two Chinese individuals were also targeted in the government's action.

The U.S. Treasury Department said its FinCEN (or Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) is taking steps that will prevent the bank from continuing to be an avenue for North Korea to have access to U.S. and international financial systems. It said the bank's activities include "facilitating millions of dollars of transactions for companies" or front entities known to have ties to the hermit regime's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

"For whatever reason, the U.S. has not taken action against China the way we had against other nations for their involvement with Iran," said Klingner.

Klingner said it was time to step up the sanctions and consider "imposing significant fines against China's big-four banks if they are found to be complicit" in illicit dealings with North Korea. In the past, he noted that the U.S. had imposed billions of dollars in fines on major European banks for money laundering, including violating sanctions with Iran.

That said, the former U.S. intelligence official added that the large Chinese banks maybe "too big to designate as money laundering concerns because it would have an impact on the U.S. and world economy."

"The medium to small banks," Klingner said, "could be designated depending on the available evidence."

President Donald Trump appears to have waited to impose sanctions against Chinese banks because he believed Chinese President Xi Jinping would be able to help persuade North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un to abandon the regime's nuclear and missile programs. A frustrated Trump, though, tweeted June 20 that "it has not worked" and many took it to mean the China outreach on North Korea had failed.

Output: The US Treasury has blacklisted China's Bank of Dandong due to its dealings with North Korea. The action also targeted two individuals. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin insisted the move was not aimed at punishing China itself. Calling it a significant but "extremely long overdue" first step, former US intelligence official Bruce Klingner said there should be a "much more extensive programme against the Chinese entities that are violating U.S. law".


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World Bank targets faster pandemic response with insurance fund
 Who would have thought that the best way to speed up the international response to major disease outbreaks would be to set up an insurance company? The World Bank, that’s who.

Nearly everyone agrees that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa that began in 2013 and lasted until 2016, killing more than eleven thousand people, would have been much smaller had the international community responded promptly to the outbreak when it was first recognized.

While some experts have primarily blamed the World Health Organization for its slow response, it’s fair to say that it wasn’t just WHO that moved too slowly to mobilize an appropriate disease containment and treatment response to the outbreak. One reason for the delay: lack of funding and consensus on who should pay.

The World Bank wants to prevent that from happening again with a new insurance scheme.

The global financing agency focused on poverty launched the scheme on Wednesday, raising more than $425 million for the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility, a pooled and re-chargeable fund that will provide money to developing countries when there is a disease outbreak. Investors can make money as long as there are not outbreaks, but pay out if a pandemic emerges.

In one sense, the fund itself provides a financial incentive to encourage a prompt response – since the earlier the world responds, the less money the investors risk paying out.

“With this new facility, we have taken a momentous step that has the potential to save millions of lives and entire economies from one of the greatest systemic threats we face,” World Bank head Jim Yong Kim said in a statement. “We are moving away from the cycle of panic and neglect that has characterized so much of our approach to pandemics.”

Kim announced the plan to start the financing facility in May 2016, but it took a year before its official formation and bond issue. The idea is based on the fact that pandemics have a significant global economic impact and acting quickly in response can prevent an outbreak from spreading out of control.

An estimated $570 billion is spent each year on moderately severe to severe pandemics globally. If the world experiences a massive epidemic on the scale like the 1918 Spanish flu that infected 500 million people, the response would easily get into the trillions of dollars, or some five percent of global GDP.

The new World Bank-sponsored pandemic fund is focused on responding to outbreaks involving six viruses that are most likely to cause a pandemic. The culprits: Orthomyxoviruses (new influenza pandemic virus A), Coronaviridae (SARS, MERS), Filoviridae (Ebola, Marburg) and other zoonotic diseases (Crimean Congo, Rift Valley, Lassa fever). Some 77 countries that are a part of the World Bank’s developing country-focused International Development Agency are eligible to receive funds from the new facility.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa was the world’s worst such pandemic, surprising experts who expected it – like most prior Ebola outbreaks – to ‘burn itself out’ and remain concentrated in a small area. Instead, for reasons that are still debate by the experts, the virus spread rapidly (and in ways never seen before), killing more than 11,000 people mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Once the WHO and the rest of the international community recognized this was a much larger, atypical outbreak of Ebola, it sill took roughly 3 months to raise $100 million amid the confusion over how best to respond. The World Bank believes mobilizing money quickly could have helped reduce deaths while also reducing costs. The outbreak eventually cost the world some $10 billion to contain, treat and aid with recovery.

The fund is essentially a global insurance agency. The World Bank developed it with reinsurance companies Swiss Re and Munich Re to develop the bonds and manage payouts. The Bank says some $500 million of coverage will be available over the next 5 years.

“This creates an entirely new market for pandemic risk insurance. Drawing on lessons from the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa, the Facility will help improve health security for everyone,” Kim said.

The money alone will not prevent future pandemics, of course. Reforms are underway at the World Health Organization to improve its ability to respond to crises and the targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals aim to help countries improve health systems. But the new World Bank fund, many say, will play an important role by speeding up access to money – an important component to averting a public health disaster.

Output: The World Bank wants to ensure that delays in funding containment and treatment for areas experiencing deadly outbreaks are avoided in future, to prevent similarly slow responses as seen following West Africa's Ebola outbreak. The bank launched a new insurance scheme earlier this week that has raised more than $425m for the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility. The facility is a pooled fund that is rechargeable and provides financial help to countries suffering from disease outbreaks. Investors stand to make a profit provided there are no outbreaks, paying out if a pandemic does occur.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Swiss insurtech start-up broker Knip merges with Dutch partner
 One of Switzerland’s most-promising fintech startups is merging with a Dutch partner. The founder and chief executive is leaving the company.

Swiss digital insurance broker Knip has agreed to merge with Komparu, a Dutch technology firm. Together they will operate as Digital Insurance Group (DIG), according to a joint statement.

Knip and Komparu already cooperated since the end of last year, as was reported by finews.ch.

Expansionary Quest

The companies didn’t disclose the details of the agreement. The merger with Knip will enable Komparu to offer comprehensive end-to-end solutions to its customers and to expand the geographic reach.

Knip, which operated in Switzerland and Germany, by contrast wants to extend its reach to the entire European market, where it sees a potential of 1.1 billion euros.

Knip CEO to Leave

The founder and CEO of Knip, Dennis Just (pictured below), won’t stay at the company. His founding partner at Knip, Christina Kehl, had already departed in spring of 2016.

The Dutch partners will take the lead in the new company. Roeland Werring, co-founder of Komparu, will be the Group chief technical officer, while Ruben Troostwijk will stay on as CEO of Komparu. Ingo Weber was appointed as CEO of DIG. Weber used to be a managing director at Swiss Re and GE Insurance.

Investors Remain on Board

The investors Orange Growth Capital, Route 66, Red Alpine and QED supported and financed the transaction. DIG will have about 70 employees. The teams are said to complement each other and there was no mention of a job cut.

Signs are that the agreement is more of a takeover by the Dutch, marking the end of a chapter of Swiss fintech history.

Politicians on Visit

Knip was widely seen as an example for others to follow for Swiss fintechs and attracted substantial investment. The broker in 2015 received 15 million francs, the biggest such round of financing a Swiss fintech had attracted at the time. The Swiss president of 2016, Johann Schneider-Ammann, had paid a visit to Knip and was informed about the potential of the fintech industry.

The company however had strong rivals in the established insurance industry and also had to cope with competition from the traditional brokerage businesses, according to media reports.

It is not possible to verify how successful Knip was in recent quarters. The merger is a reminder of how tough it can be for a fintech to make a business idea come to fruition.

Output: Dutch technology company Komparu and Swiss digital insurance broker Knip have agreed to merge to form Digital Insurance Group (DIG) and expand the firm's footprint, according to a joint statement. Although the terms of the deal were not disclosed, it was revealed CEO of Knip, Dennis Just, will leave the firm. Knip was held up as an example for other fintechs to follow, and insiders said the deal was more of a takeover by the Dutch outfit.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Quarter of UK electricity generated from renewables in Q1 2017
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Renewable energy generated a record amount of electricity in the first three months of this year, making up more than 26 per cent of the total produced in the UK, according to new government figures.

In total, some 24.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity came from wind, solar, hydro and other forms of clean energy, up by more than five per cent on the same period last year.

Onshore wind set a new record for a three-month period, providing 8.3 per cent of the UK’s electricity.

Renewables provided 26.6 per cent of the total and, including nuclear, low-carbon sources made up 45.6 per cent.

Emma Pinchbeck, executive director of industry body RenewableUK, said in a statement: “Renewable energy is a mainstream technology, which is cheaper and more advanced than ever.

“Our innovative industries have matured to the point where we now reliably provide over 25 per cent of the UK with clean, sustainable power.

“It’s great to see that onshore wind has set a new record, producing more electricity than ever at a time of year when we need it most.”

The record figures were produced despite lower wind speeds than last year, with the increase in renewable capacity more than making up for the shortfall.

First commercial flight powered by renewable energy takes to skies

The Government report said: “Onshore wind increased by 1.3 TWh (20 per cent) to 7.7 TWh in 2017 quarter one, the highest increase across the technologies.

“Total wind generation increased by 10 per cent to 12.7 TWh; the increase in capacity was partially offset by lower wind speeds.

“Solar increased by 16 per cent, from 1.5 TWh in 2016 quarter one to 1.7 TWh in 2017 quarter one due to increased capacity.”

Decarbonising the UK economy is required to meet its international commitments as part of the attempt to reduce the effects of global warming.

10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 / 10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke – filled with the carbon that is driving climate change – drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. “Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals,” says the photographer. “Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow.” Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a “public health emergency”. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan

The UK has been doing relatively well in switching to low-carbon electricity, but has performed less well in the domestic heating and transport sectors.

The Government’s own expert advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, chaired by former Conservative cabinet minister John Gummer, now Lord Deben, this week criticised ministers’ lack of action, warning the problem was “happening, not waiting” and it was “neither justifiable nor wise to delay further”.

Output: In the first quarter of 2017, renewables generated more than 26% of the UK's electricity, according to data from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Almost 24.8 terawatt-hours of electricity came from hydro, wind, solar and other forms of clean energy, 5% up on last year. Low-carbon sources, including nuclear, made up 45.6%.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Women name those responsible for harassment in tech sector
 Their stories came out slowly, even hesitantly, at first. Then in a rush.

One female entrepreneur recounted how she had been propositioned by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist while seeking a job with him, which she did not land after rebuffing him. Another showed the increasingly suggestive messages she had received from a start-up investor. And one chief executive described how she had faced numerous sexist comments from an investor while raising money for her online community website.

What happened afterward was often just as disturbing, the women told The New York Times. Many times, the investors’ firms and colleagues ignored or played down what had happened when the situations were brought to their attention. Saying anything, the women were warned, might lead to ostracism.

Now some of these female entrepreneurs have decided to take that risk. More than two dozen women in the technology start-up industry spoke to The Times in recent days about being sexually harassed. Ten of them named the investors involved, often providing corroborating messages and emails, and pointed to high-profile venture capitalists such as Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital and Dave McClure of 500 Startups.

The disclosures came after the tech news site The Information reported that female entrepreneurs had been preyed upon by a venture capitalist, Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital. The new accounts underscore how sexual harassment in the tech start-up ecosystem goes beyond one firm and is pervasive and ingrained. Now their speaking out suggests a cultural shift in Silicon Valley, where such predatory behavior had often been murmured about but rarely exposed.

Output: Over two dozen women working in technology start-ups have spoken to The New York Times about being sexually harassed at work. Ten of the women quoted named those responsible for their harassment and made allegations against high-profile venture capitalists including Dave McClure of 500 Startups, who has resigned in the wake of the accusations, and Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital. The allegations follow earlier reports of harassment accusations against Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital. The women in the report comment on the gender and power imbalances in the sector and the reluctance of firms and colleagues to tackle the issue.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Women name those responsible for harassment in tech sector
 A prominent Silicon Valley investor has resigned following allegations of sexual harassment, and just hours before a fresh allegation surfaced, this time of sexual assault.

On Monday, Dave McClure resigned as general partner of 500 Startups, the seed investment group he co-founded in 2010, after several women accused him of inappropriate behavior. He had already stepped down as chief executive of the investment group following the allegations and published a blog post apologizing for being “inappropriate”.

The blog posted prompted entrepreneur Cheryl Sew Hoy to come forward with an even more serious allegation: that McClure sexually assaulted her three years ago.

“I’m now ready to tell my account of what Dave McClure inflicted on me three years ago, in my own apartment. It’s not just inappropriate, it’s assault,” she wrote in a blog post on her website.

McClure did not immediately respond to repeated requests for comment.

His resignation comes one week after well-connected venture capitalist Justin Caldbeck admitted to sexually harassing female entrepreneurs and stepped down in the face of numerous public accusations. A former Uber engineer’s account of harassment and discrimination also went viral in February, sparking widespread outrage about sexism in Silicon Valley.

McClure’s departure from 500 Startups was announced by co-founder Christine Tsai in an email sent to the company’s investors on Monday. The email stated that 500 Startups had received several harassment allegations against McClure, investigated and “found his behavior to have been unacceptable”. The email added that 500 Startups “cannot be certain there won’t be future reports”.

One of the women who came forward was entrepreneur Sarah Kunst, who was one of more than two dozen women who spoke to the New York Times about sexual harassment in Silicon Valley. Kunst alleges that McClure sent her sexually suggestive Facebook messages while she was discussing a possible job at 500 Startups. “I was getting confused figuring out whether to hire you or hit on you,” said McClure in one message.

The day after the article was published, McClure wrote a blog post apologizing for his actions, titled “I’m a creep. I’m sorry.”

“I made advances towards multiple women in work-related situations, where it was clearly inappropriate,” he said. “I put people in compromising and inappropriate situations, and I selfishly took advantage of those situations where I should have known better. My behavior was inexcusable and wrong.”

When Sew Hoy saw McClure being praised for his honesty and bravery, she said, she decided to speak up.

“People were saying ‘it’s just Dave being Dave’,” Sew Hoy told the Guardian. “Then I realized I had the power to change the narrative not just for myself but for a greater cause: other women.”

“I felt like this story – after Ellen Pao and Susan Fowler – could be the tipping point for a whole cultural shift in the industry.”

In her blogpost, Sew Hoy said McClure assaulted her in her own apartment three years ago. Sew Hoy’s startup ReclipIt had been funded by 500 Startups, and McClure had flown to Malaysia to meet investors in her new venture, she wrote.

McClure and several others came to Sew Hoy’s apartment to brainstorm, but what “started out to be an innocent night of just jamming and hanging out at my new apartment turned into a nightmare episode that has been haunting me for the past three years”, she said.

According to Sew Hoy’s account, McClure continued to pour scotch into her glass before she had finished drinking, and eventually everyone left except McClure. She asked him if he wanted to leave, and he said no, at which point she offered to let him stay in a guest room, Sew Hoy wrote.

“I went into my own bedroom but Dave followed me there, and that’s when he first propositioned to sleep with me. I said no. I reminded Dave that he knew my then-boyfriend and that we’d just talked about him earlier that night,” she wrote.

She said that after she led him to the door to get him to leave, “he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner, made contact to kiss me, and said something along the lines of ‘Just one night, please just this one time.’ Then he told me how he really likes strong and smart women like me. Disgusted and outraged, I said no firmly again, pushed him away and made sure he was out my door.”

When McClure apologized a year later in a Facebook message, it was “half-hearted”, according to Sew Hoy: “I was disappointed that he used words like ‘If that incident last year made you feel uncomfortable, I’d like to apologize,’ and ‘if I misread things or acted inappropriately.’ If? It showed me that he did not think what he did was wrong, was not remorseful, did not own up to it and it was not a sincere apology.”

Sew Hoy hopes that her story will lead investors to create clear policies around sexual harassment and discrimination.

“It will also lead to more awareness and make anyone think twice about making a move. People who did in the past must be shitting their pants right now.”

Asked for comment on Sew Hoy’s blogpost, 500 Startups said in a statement: “We appreciate Cheryl speaking up and realize how upsetting and painful it is for her to have gone through that experience and have the courage to speak up. We can only hope our efforts in changing 500 can help create a safe and effective platform for female founders around the world.”

Two of 500 Startups investors, Freada Kapor Klein and her husband Mitch Kapor, said that the tech ecosystem is a “sector gone deeply awry”.

“This is not just a case of a few bad actors. This is not something that is fixable with a pledge or a new policy,” they said in a statement.

“This is a culture that has been allowed to fester and to rot by enablers who refused to intervene when they witnessed inexcusable behavior or went to great lengths to avoid seeing it.”

Output: Over two dozen women working in technology start-ups have spoken to The New York Times about being sexually harassed at work. Ten of the women quoted named those responsible for their harassment and made allegations against high-profile venture capitalists including Dave McClure of 500 Startups, who has resigned in the wake of the accusations, and Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital. The allegations follow earlier reports of harassment accusations against Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital. The women in the report comment on the gender and power imbalances in the sector and the reluctance of firms and colleagues to tackle the issue.