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Google, together with its partner SubCom, today announced that the company’s privately owned Dunant subsea cable between Virginia Beach, Virginia and Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez on the French Atlantic coast is now operational.
Google first announced this project, which was named after the first Noble Peach Price winner and founder of the Red Cross, Henry Dunant, back in the middle of 2018. At the time it expected the project to go live in 2020, but besides dealing with the complications of spanning a long cable between continents, the project leaders probably didn’t budget for a global pandemic at the time.
The almost 4,000-mile cable has a total capacity of 250 terabits per second — or enough to transmit the “entire digitized Library of Congress three times every second” (though maybe using Library of Congress data size references is starting to feel a bit antiquated at this point?). Unlike some older cables, Dunant uses 12 fiber pairs, coupled with a number of technical innovations around maximizing its bandwidth, to achieve these numbers.
“Google is dedicated to meeting the exploding demand for cloud services and online content that continues unabated,” said Mark Sokol, senior director of Infrastructure, Google Cloud. “With record-breaking capacity and transmission speeds, Dunant will help users access content wherever they may be and supplement one of the busiest routes on the internet to support the growth of Google Cloud. Dunant is a remarkable achievement that would not have been possible without the dedication of both SubCom and Google’s employees, partners, and suppliers, who overcame multiple challenges this year to make this system a reality.”
Image Credits: Google
With Dunant now being operational, the next Google cable to go live will be the Grace Hopper cable between New York and Europe, with landing sites in Bilbao, Spain and Bude, UK. Google first announced this new cable, which it is also building in partnership with SubCom, last July. It’s expected to go online in 2022 and will feature a total of 16 fiber pairs.
In addition, Google is also building the Equiano cable from South Africa to Portugal. This cable is supposed to go online later this year.
In addition to its privately-owned cables, Google is also a partner in a number of consortiums that band together to build cable systems.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/03/googles-new-subsea-cable-between-the-u-s-and-europe-is-now-online/
Several high-level Apple services are experiencing issues and outages on Wednesday morning, Apple has confirmed. These issues are impacting a number of consumer-facing services including Apple Music and Radio, Apple Books, and the App Store platforms across both iOS devices and Mac.
For some users, the services are down. For example, there were reports circulating this morning that users were having problems streaming music through Apple Music or using iTunes. Other have noticed strange problems cropping up on the App Store — like app search results that only returned a small handful of top apps related to the search term.
Even when the services are partially up, they’re sometimes much slower to load than usual — meaning users may see blank pages for several seconds before the page is populated with its usual content.
Image Credits: Apple
At the time of the initial reports, Apple’s Status page didn’t reflect these issues, as it showed all services as being available. That has since changed. Now, the page displays outages are occurring across the App Store, Apple Book, Apple Music, Apple Music Radio, iTunes Store, Mac App Store, and Radio.
The Apple Support Twitter account has also posted about the outage, but has yet to provide details about what has happened or when it might be resolved.
What’s concerning is that the account replied to a tweet with a complaint from a user who said they couldn’t reset their password — an indication that the outages could be impacting other types of backend services, as well.
Some services are currently experiencing an outage. Hang tight and keep checking back: https://t.co/waNYZdXpJm If you’d like to connect with us in DM, we can look further. https://t.co/GDrqU22YpT
— Apple Support (@AppleSupport) February 3, 2021
Apple says it’s working to provide us with more information on this, and we’ll update when the company has more to share.
Techstars Los Angeles, the local Los Angeles-focused branch of the global accelerator network, has named Matt Kozlov as its new managing director.
Kozlov, a longtime Techstars network fixture, has previously served as the head of the organization’s healthcare accelerator through a partnership with Cedars-Sinai and as the head of the Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator, which was focused on space and aerospace startups.
Now, Kozlov turns his attention to the Los Angeles ecosystem broadly.
“I’m humbled to have the opportunity each day to support incredible founders who are solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges,” said Kozlov, in a statement. “As I begin this new role, my goal is to continue to leverage my experience to help generate opportunities for future Techstars LA companies to make meaningful, long-term impact.”
Kozlov’s appointment comes as the Los Angeles tech ecosystem is having something of a moment. As the diaspora out of Silicon Valley continues, the Southern California tech world has proven to be a tempting landing pad during the COVID-19 pandemic. And remote work means that Los Angeles could be a fixture for more investors looking to escape the Bay.
Beyond Southern California’s coastal appeal is a vibrant technology ecosystem that encompasses enterprise software, financial services, healthcare, aerospace and defense, robotics, ecommerce and social media. It’s the home of social networking favorites Snap and TikTok’s U.S. base of operations and SpaceX’s significant presence has born a number of talented hardware and engineering startups.
LA is truly having a moment and Kozlov’s experience with some of the less-well-known corners of the city’s tech ecosystem could be a boon for the Techstars program.
“I’m thrilled by the selection of Matt as the new Managing Director for Techstars LA,” said Anna Barber, former Managing Director, Techstars LA, who stepped down from the role in November to join venture firm M13 as Partner, in a statement. “He is a talented investor and longstanding leader in LA’s Techstars community, and has been an essential and valued mentor for the program for the past four years. He embodies the Techstars values of #givefirst and I have every confidence that he is the right leader to continue building on what we’ve established in the LA community.”
Collectively, the 40 alumni companies who have participated in Techstars Los Angeles accelerator program have raised over $126 million and have a combined market cap of $328.6 million.
“Techstars LA plays a critical role in the Los Angeles tech ecosystem as the premier startup accelerator, providing valuable mentorship and funding for dozens of companies a year,” said Spencer Rascoff, Chair of dot.LA and Los Angeles angel investor. “I’m very excited that Matt will be the new Managing Director of Techstars LA. He brings extensive experience in healthcare and aerospace investing and has been an incredible mentor and leader to the companies of the Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator over the last several years.”
Revel, the shared electric moped startup, is building a DC fast-charging station for electric vehicles in New York City, the first in a new business venture that will eventually spread to other cities.
The company said Wednesday that this new “Superhub,” which is located at the former Pfizer building in Brooklyn, will contain 30 chargers and be open to the public 24 hours a day. This will be the first in a network of Superhubs opened by Revel across New York City, the company said.
Revel didn’t build the EV charging infrastructure in house. Instead, it is using Tritium’s new RTM75 model for the first 10 chargers at its Brooklyn site, which will go live this spring. These chargers are designed to delivery with 100 additional miles of charge to an electric vehicle in about 20 minutes, according to Revel.
The EV charging business has been couched by Revel as a mission to electrify cities. The move comes as a growing number of automakers, including legacy companies like GM, Ford and VW Group along with new entrant Rivian and EV leader Tesla add more electric vehicles to their portfolios.
Revel’s expansion into charging marks its first new product line since launching a shared fleet of electric mopeds in 2018. Revel, founded by Frank Reig and Paul Suhey, started with a pilot program in Brooklyn and later expanded to Queens, the Bronx and sections of Manhattan. It has been on a fast-paced growth track thanks to the $27.6 million in capital raised October 2019 in a Series A round led by Ibex Investors. The equity round included newcomer Toyota AI Ventures and further investments from Blue Collective, Launch Capital and Maniv Mobility.
Several thousands mopeds are available to rent in New York City today. Revel expanded its shared moped business to other cities such as Austin, Miami and Washington, D.C in its first 18 months of operation. Last year, the company launched in Oakland and received a permit in July 2020 to operate in San Francisco.
Shared mopeds haven’t been successful everywhere. Revel pulled out of Austin in December. Reig said at the time that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused ridership to fall across shared micromobility services, along with the city’s deep-rooted car culture was proven difficult to penetrate.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/03/electric-moped-startup-revel-launches-an-ev-charging-business/
