Technology

DSP Concepts — a startup whose Audio Weaver software is used by companies as varied as Tesla, Porsche, GoPro and Braun Audio — is announcing that it has raised $14.5 million in Series B funding.

The startup goal, as explained to me by CEO Chin Beckmann and CTO Paul Beckmann (yep, they&re a husband-and-wife founding team), is to create the standard framework that companies use to develop their audio processing software.

To that end, Chin told me they were &picky about who we wanted on the B round, we wanted it to represent the support and endorsement of the industry.&

So the round was led by Taiwania Capital, but it also includes investments from the strategic arms of DSP Concepts& industry partners — BMW i Ventures (which led the Series A), the Sony Innovation Growth Fund by Innovation Growth Ventures, MediaTek Ventures, Porsche Ventures and the ARM IoT Fund.

Paul said Audio Weaver started out as the &secret weapon& of the Beckmanns& consulting business, which he could use to &whip out& the results of an audio engineering project. At a certain point, consulting customers started asking him, &Hey, how about you teach me how to use that?,& so they decided to launch a startup focused on the Audio Weaver platform.

Paul described the software as a &graphical block diagram editor.& Basically, it provides a way for audio engineers to combine and customize different software modules for audio processing.

&Audio is still in the Stone Ages compared to other industries,& he said. &Suppose you&re building a product with a touchscreen — are you going write the graphics from scratch or use a framework like Qt?&

Similarly, he suggested that while many audio engineers are still &down in the weeds writing code,& they can take advantage of Audio Weavergraphical interface to piece everything together, as well as the company&hundreds of different modules — pre-written, pre-tested, pre-optimized functions to build up your system.&

For example, Paul said that by using the Audio Weaver platform, DSP Concepts engineers could test out &hundreds of ideas& for algorithms for reducing wind noise in the footage captured by GoPro cameras, then ultimately &hand the algorithms over to GoPro,& whose team could them plug the algorithms into their software and modify it themselves.

The Beckmanns said the company also works closely with chip manufacturers to ensure that audio software will work properly on any device powered by a given chipset.

Other modules include TalkTo, which is designed to give voice assistants like Alexa &super-hearing,& so that they can still isolate voice commands and cancel out all the other noise in loud environments, even rock concerts. (You can watch a TalkTo demo in the video below.)

DSP Concepts has now raised more than $25 million in total funding.

After eBay, Visa, Stripe and other high-profile partners ditched the Facebook -backed cryptocurrency collective, Libra scored a win today with the addition of Shopify. The e-commerce platform will become a member of Libra Association, contributing at least $10 million and operating a node that processes transactions for the Facebook-originated stable coin.

If Libra manages to assuage international regulators& concerns, which are currently blocking its roll out, Shopify could gain a way to process transactions without paying credit card fees. Libra is designed to move between wallets with zero or nearly-zero fees. That could save money for Shopify and the 1 million merchants running online shops on its platform.

Shopify stressed that helping merchants reduce fees and bringing commerce opportunities to developing nations as reasons itjoining the Libra Association . &Much of the worldfinancial infrastructure was not built to handle the scale and needs of internet commerce,& Shopify writes. Here are the most critical parts of its announcement:

Our mission is to make commerce better for everyone and to do that, we spend a lot of our time thinking about how to make commerce better in parts of the world where money and banking could be far better . . . As a member of the Libra Association, we will work collectively to build a payment network that makes money easier to access and supports merchants and consumers everywhere . . . Our mission has always been to support the entrepreneurial journey of the more than one million merchants on our platform. That means advocating for transparent fees and easy access to capital, and ensuring the security and privacy of our merchants& customer data. We want to create an infrastructure that empowers more entrepreneurs around the world.

As part of the Libra Association, Shopify will become a validator node operator, gain one vote on the Libra Association council and can earn dividends from interest earned on the Libra reserve in proportion to its investment, which is $10 million at a minimum.

The Libra Association had lost much of its e-commerce expertise when a string of members abandoned the project in October amidst regulatory scrutiny. That included traditional payment processors like Visa and Mastercard, online processors like Stripe and PayPal and marketplaces like eBay. That threw into question whether Libra would have the right partners to make the cryptocurrency accepted in enough places to be useful to people.

As it works to convince regulators Libra is safe, Facebook has been working on its other payment plays, including Facebook Pay and WhatsApp Pay, that rely on traditional bank transfers or credit cards.

ShopifyCEO Tobi Lutke tweeted that &Shopify spends a lot of time thinking about how to make commerce better in parts of the world where money and banking could be far better. Thatwhy we decided to become a member of the Libra Association.&

&We are proud to welcome Shopify, Inc. (SHOP) to the Libra Association. As a multinational commerce platform with over one million businesses in approximately 175 countries, Shopify, Inc. brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the Libra project,& writes Dante Disparte, the Libra Associationhead of Policy and Communications. &Shopify joins an active group of Libra Association members committed to achieving a safe, transparent, and consumer-friendly implementation of a global payment system that breaks down financial barriers for billions of people.&

A recent hire further tied the two companies together. Facebookformer lead product manager for its payment platform and billing teams, Kaz Nejatian, in September became ShopifyVP and GM of money.

Operating an e-commerce store can be difficult or impossible without a traditional bank account that can be tough to attain in some developing countries. Libra could allow these merchants to establish a Libra Wallet where payments are sent instantly, without steep credit card fees, and in theory could be cashed out at local brick-and-mortar establishments or ATMs for local fiat currency.

Shopifycredit card readers

But for any of that to happen, the Libra Association will have to convince the U.S. government, the EU and more that it won&t help terrorists launder money, hurt peopleprivacy or weaken nations& power in the global financial system. &The French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, &the monetary sovereignty of countries is at stake from a possible privatisation of money . . . we cannot authorise the development of Libra on European soil.&

Libra was initially slated to launch in 2020. We&ll see.

—

Herethe full list of Libra Association members:

Current

FacebookCalibra, Shopify, PayU, Farfetch, Lyft, Spotify, Uber, Illiad SA, Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Xapo, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Breakthrough Initiatives, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Creative Destruction Lab, Kiva, Mercy Corps, WomenWorld Banking.

Former members

Vodafone, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, PayPal, Mercado Pago, Bookings Holdings, eBay.

President of the company calls the IT department to ask how to recall an email message, reports a pilot fish in the loop.

Impossible, tech tells him. Once an email message has been sent to the server, it can&t be recalled, and trying to do so will just draw attention to the email. The president doesnotwant that.

&Next day, my boss calls me and two other members of our department into her office,& says fish. &She says that wehaveto get that email back. And we can&t let any of the 70 people it was sent to know what we&re doing. Oh, and it was sent two weeks ago.&

Then the boss gives this little pep talk: &Thatnigh unto impossible, right? Well, we regularly have to make the impossible possible.&

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In a somewhat unusual move for Apple, the company has joined the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance, an authentication standards group dedicated to replacing passwords with another, faster and more secure method for logging into online services and apps.

Apple is among the last tech bigwigs to join FIDO, whose members now include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft, RSA, Samsung, Qualcomm and VMware. The group also boasts more than a dozen financial service firms such as American Express, ING, Mastercard, PayPal, Visa and Wells Fargo.

&Apple is not usually up front in joining new organizations and often waits to see if they gain enough traction before joining in. This is fairly atypical for them,& said Jack Gold, president and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. "Apple is often trying to present [its] own proposed industry standards for wide adoption, but is generally not an early adopter of true multi-vendor industry standards.

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With Liverpool’s lead at the top of the Premier League seemingly now unassailable, a more competitive battle for the runners-up spot is now playing out between these two sides. That's why it's no surprise you're eager to learn how to get a Leicester vs Man City live stream today - no matter where in the world you happen to be.

Leicester boss

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