Attendees of President Trump’s Thursday rally in Michigan told “Hannity” election correspondent Lawrence Jones that they support the Republican because he “tells it like it is.”
“Why are you supporting the president?” Jones asked one woman wearing a “MAGA” hat.
“Because he tells it like it is,” she answered. Two other women told Jones that “he’s real.” One man indicated that Trump “tells the truth.”
BIDEN LEADS 2020 RACE, BUT PLURALITY THINKS TRUMP WILL WIN ELECTION: POLL
“If you ask me, I think we’ve been surrounded by a bunch of people that aren’t telling us the truth,” he told Jones.
Others at the rally said they didn’t believe polling that showed former Vice President Joe Biden beating Trump in the 2020 election.
When asked whether Biden had a shot at winning Michigan, the first woman said “no, he’s got to be conscious.” One man similarly criticized Biden’s public appearances, saying that “he can’t even finish a whole sentence.”
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A Monmouth University poll published earlier Thursday showed Biden leading Trump by nine percentage points among registered voters.
However, a plurality of voters (48 percent versus 43 percent) said they thought Trump would win the election.
Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
In the last weekend of August, when Emma Heathcote-James had been looking forward to a relaxing bank-holiday break, she instead found herself fighting to save her company’s reputation.
She had just discovered the Instagram page for her beauty-product business, which she had spent 12 years building up, had been cloned.
“For some reason the scammers tagged me in one of the photos, which seems like it was probably a mistake,” she says.
And this alerted her to the cloned page, where the only discernible difference from the legitimate Little Soap Co’s page was an extra “o” at the end of the name.
As well as making a carbon copy of the page, the scammers were intent on making some money.
“The account went private and we discovered that they spent the entire evening on bank-holiday Monday contacting hundreds of our followers, who had entered our latest competition, saying they had won and asking for PayPal details,” Emma says.
At least one of her customers responded but she does not know how many more were affected or who lost money.
And trying to persuade Instagram to remove the fake page proved frustrating.
Square one
“It was impossible to speak to a human at Instagram,” Emma tells BBC News.
“We couldn’t log it as a business-impersonation account as the form to fill in takes you on a loop with nothing at the end, instead you are back to square one.
“It is like they don’t want to be contacted.
image copyrightLittle Soap Company
image captionThe Little Soap Company has 7,000 followers on Instagram
And Emma finally told a person or a software bot – she is not sure which – on Facebook Messenger about what she regarded as trademark infringements.
“I got an email back saying it wasn’t an infringement but that it breached the terms and conditions of the community guidelines,” she says.
“And the account was taken down.”
‘Very fortunate’
But it was a “cursory” email, devoid of any personal touch.
“It was like Facebook was saying, ‘Done – next,'” Emma says.
By then the issue had also been logged with the police, who told Emma such cloning was “rife”.
“We were very fortunate how speedily it was taken down,” she says.
“But we had three of us working on it.
“Not all businesses have this resource.”
‘Iron fortress’
And she remains angry about the way it was dealt with.
“Every other digital platform we pay to use has good customer service, whereas Facebook, which is a good shop window for many businesses, is very different,” Emma says.
“It feels like an iron fortress.
“It’s very hard to speak to anyone.
“And the chatbots aren’t yet intelligent enough to help.”
Fake accounts
Facebook told BBC News: “We have removed the accounts brought to our attention for inauthentic behaviour.
“We’re continuously investing in our teams and technology to identify and remove fraudulent activity, and have donated £3m to Citizens Advice to deliver a UK scam action programme, which spreads the word on how to avoid scams and offers support to people who have been affected.”
Every day, Facebook’s detection technology blocks millions of attempts to create fake accounts.
But account cloning remains a problem for both Facebook and Instagram, with individuals targeted alongside businesses.
Twitter and LinkedIn have to tackle similar scams.
Bitcoin scam
Cloning is remarkably easy to do.
image copyrightJake Moore
image captionJake Moore cloned his own account to see how easy it was to profit from it
In a blog, security specialist at anti-virus company ESET Jake Moore explains how he copied his own Instagram account in an afternoon – and, with a sob story about being locked out of his bank account as well as social media, persuaded one of his followers to send him money
He had the following advice:
To avoid being cloned, search for your hashtags or reverse image search on Google to see if the pictures you have posted appear elsewhere
If you are cloned, take a photo of yourself with some official ID and email Facebook
If you receive a message from someone you don’t know requesting funds, do not send money
If you receive a message from someone you know asking for money, check with them the message is real
Emma is certainly planning on keeping a very close eye on any suspicious activity around her brand and has since found another cloned account and two cloned versions of her personal Instagram page – all now removed.
TikTok has acknowledged that it restricts LGBT-related hashtags in some countries as part of its “localised” approach to moderation.
A
report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think-tank said many LGBT hashtags were “shadow-banned” in Bosnia, Jordan and Russia.
A shadow ban limits the discovery of content without indicating that a particular hashtag is on a ban list.
TikTok said that some hashtags were restricted to comply with local laws.
According to the ASPI, terms that were not linking to content included:
“gay” in Russian and Arabic
“I am a lesbian” and “I am gay” in Russian
“transgender” in Arabic
TikTok said that while some terms were restricted to comply with local laws, others were limited because they were primarily used to discover pornographic content.
It added that some English phrases and some compound phrases in Arabic had been moderated by mistake, and that it had fixed the issue.
And it said some of the hashtags reported by the ASPI did not reveal any content because they had never been used by a video-maker on TikTok.
It said it was “deeply committed to inclusivity”.
Many LGBT social media users will be unsurprised by these findings – especially those who live in one of the “shadow-banned” nations, where the struggle to be themselves extends far beyond hashtags on the internet.
In June 2020, TikTok branded itself as supportive of LGBT Pride, and the company made donations to organisations supporting LGBT people.
While TikTok may believe in “accountability and transparency”, their algorithm keeps getting caught out for discrimination.
One TikTok user living in South East Asia told me, while they were disappointed that their gender identity was being categorised as inappropriate in their native language, they knew the ways around the bans and frequently used them.
They added: “That’s just part of what being LGBT in 2020 is.”
LGBT rights group Stonewall said social media platforms such as TikTok provided a “vital community hub” for LGBT people, “particularly for those living in countries where they can face persecution for being themselves”.
“While we understand why local laws my affect some restrictions, it’s crucial TikTok follows up its statement of support for LGBT creators with action to tackle shadow banning of LGBT hashtags,” said Stonewall’s head of communications, Robbie de Santo.
In a statement, TikTok said: “We believe that accountability and transparency are essential to facilitating trust with our community. As part of this, we’ve committed to making our moderation policies, algorithm, and data security practices available to experts, which no other company in our space has been willing to do.”
Image caption
A head of Romanesco recorded across the 3,200 megapixels of Vera Rubin’s camera detector
How do you test the new sensor for the world’s largest digital camera? You take a picture of broccoli, of course.
This might sound bizarre but the intricate shapes found in the Romanesco version of this plant are a good check that you’re capturing lots of detail.
And for the camera that’s to be fitted to the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile – performance is everything.
This 3.2 gigapixel device is going to help unlock some of the key outstanding questions in astronomy.
Who knows? It might even get us closer to understanding those cosmic head-scratchers “dark energy” and “dark matter” which appear to be controlling the evolution of so much of what we see when we look up.
Image copyright J.Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Image caption
The focal plane is made up of 189 individual sensors, or charge-coupled devices
The VRO will do this by making what can only be described as a stupendous map of the sky.
The observatory is going to survey its entire field of view every few nights for 10 years.
Not only will Rubin clock the positions of billions of stars and galaxies, but it will also catch anything that moves or flashes. It will be a treasure trove of data that’ll keep scientists busy for decades.
But to undertake such a survey, the VRO needs a special camera – like the one now being assembled at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California.
Image copyright J.Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Image caption
To test the camera detector, the team used a pinhole box to project light on to the sensors
At its heart is a 64cm-wide focal plane made up of 189 individual sensors, or charge-coupled devices (CCDs). Getting them all securely and precisely mounted and their complex electronics talking in unison has been an immense challenge.
But the pictures released on Tuesday demonstrate the task has been completed successfully.
The SLAC team isn’t yet in possession of all the camera’s components, such as its lenses, so it used a 150-micron pinhole to project images on to the CCD array.
The brassica plant was deliberately chosen for its very elaborate surface structure. Innumerable lumps and bumps. A tonne of detail to pick out.
Just how good are the pictures? If you wanted to display them full size at full resolution, you’d need 378 4K ultra-high-definition TV screens.
Image copyright Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
“If we’re to complete this survey of the sky, we’re going to need a big telescope and a big camera,” explained VRO director Steve Kahn.
“This three billion pixel camera will cover about 10 square degrees of sky; and to give you a feel for that, it’s about 40 times the size of a full Moon. And we’ll be taking pictures across the sky essentially every 15 seconds,” he told BBC News.
“We’ll get very deep images of the whole sky. But almost more importantly, we’ll get a time sequence. We’ll see which stars have changed in brightness, and anything that has moved through the sky like asteroids and comets.”
Image copyright J.Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Image caption
Getting all the individual CCDs and their electronics working in unison was an immense challenge
Vera Rubin is principally an American project, but with a strong international dimension.
UK scientists are expected to play a big part in the analysis of data, having a lot of expertise in sky survey work.
The VRO has been in the news recently because of its potential vulnerability to the satellite mega-constellations that are now being launched.
Image copyright Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA
Image caption
The VRO is being constructed atop Cerro Pachón, a 2,682m-high mountain in northern Chile
Large numbers of low-orbiting telecommunications spacecraft streaking through the camera’s field of view could ruin its images.
The largest of the new mega-constellations – at present – is the one being lofted by the entrepreneur Elon Musk and his SpaceX company.
Prof Kahn said the VRO was engaged with Mr Musk and that engineers were working on solutions to limit the interference.
The observatory director said better engagement was now needed from the British-Indian-owned OneWeb company, however.
Image copyright LSST Camera Team/SLAC/VRO/Carnegie Institution
Image caption
In her honour: Vera Rubin (1928-2016) was an American astronomer who helped pioneer the concept of dark matter
This network’s satellites could eventually pose a bigger problem than even SpaceX because the spacecraft are higher in the sky and will stay in the VRO’s field of view for much longer.
“The UK astronomy has assembled a large collaboration so it might be helpful for them to work on getting OneWeb to cooperate,” Prof Khan told BBC News.
“These problems are not completely insoluble but you need reasonable cooperation.”
It’s expected the VRO’s camera will start taking images of the sky – as opposed to heads of broccoli – in late 2022.
Image copyright J.Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
The Michigan Republican Party says its headquarters in Lansing was vandalized over the Labor Day weekend “with radical anti-police statements,” and it shared photos of graffiti on the building.
“Sunday night our building was vandalized with radical anti-police statements,” the party tweeted Monday. “We will not be intimidated, and we will continue to work hard to ensure President @realDonaldTrump is re-elected!”
The photos showed spray-painted graffiti that said “abolish police,” “f–k police,” “f–k 12” and “f–k you.” It’s not clear who is responsible for the graffiti, though the state party said they filed a report with the City of Lansing Police Department.
It comes amid nationwide protests against police brutality and the far-left “defund the police” movement.
The graffiti also said “f–k ICE.” In a statement, the party said they believe it to be a reference to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency where its chairwoman, Laura Cox, once served as an agent.
‘DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE SCARED ABOUT MICHIGAN,’ STATE’S HOUSE SPEAKER SAYS
“This vandalism is emblematic of the chaos sweeping through our nation’s Democrat-run cities, as the radical left uses criminal tactics to try and extort weak politicians into defunding the men and woman who keep us safe,” Cox said in the statement. “Republicans will not be intimidated. President Trump will not be intimidated. And this November, the American people will show the world they will not be intimidated when they reelect President Donald Trump.”
Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, condemned the vandalism.
“Another heinous attack on police and @realDonaldTrump supporters,” McDaniel tweeted. “We will not be silenced and we are going to make our voices heard in November!”
Michigan is considered a swing state in the 2020 presidential race between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Biden’s campaign announced last week that the former vice president will be traveling to Michigan on Wednesday.
While Trump won the state in 2016, the Real Clear Politics polling average shows Biden up by 5 points in Michigan. Still, Republicans in the state insist Trump can win again.
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“Democrats should be scared about Michigan,” the state’s Republican House speaker, Lee Chatfield, told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday, adding that “it went red in 2016” and he thinks “it will go red again” this year.
Fox News’ Talia Kaplan contributed to this report.
If you’ve ever received a parcel from a shopping platform that you didn’t order, and nobody you know seems to have bought it for you, you might have been caught up in a “brushing” scam.
It has hit the headlines after thousands of Americans received unsolicited packets of seeds in the mail, but it is not new.
It’s an illicit way for sellers to get reviews for their products.
It doesn’t mean your account has been hacked.
Here’s an example of how it works: let’s say I set myself up as a seller on Amazon, for my product, Kleinman Candles, which cost £2 each.
I then set up a load of fake accounts, and I find random names and addresses either from publicly available information or from a leaked database that’s doing the rounds from a previous data breach.
I order Kleinman Candles from my fake accounts and have them delivered to the addresses I have found, with no information about where they have been sent from.
I then leave positive reviews for Kleinman Candles from each fake account – which has genuinely made a purchase.
This way my candle page gets filled with glowing reviews (sorry), my sales figures give me an algorithmic popularity boost as a credible merchant – and nobody knows that the only person buying and reviewing my candles is myself.
It tends to happen with low-cost products, including cheap electronics.
It’s more a case of fake marketing than cyber-crime, but “brushing” and fake reviews are against Amazon’s policies.
Campaign group Which? advises that you inform the platform of any unsolicited goods when they arrive.
It first investigated the practice in 2018, and found that in some cases, the people affected had been victims of data breaches elsewhere, meaning at least some of their personal data was available in unexpected places.
“It’s an old fashioned scam – making people believe in something is a way of getting them to buy,” said Prof Alan Woodward, a cyber-security expert at Surrey University.
“Like it or not, we do all look at the reviews, even though we are getting more savvy about it, and if it says it’s from a verified purchaser, we’re less likely to think twice.”
Can you keep it?
According to Citizens’ Advice, if an item is addressed to you, and there has been no previous contact with the company, and it arrives out of the blue, then you can keep it.
US Open spokesman Chris Widmaier told CNN earlier this week the player couldn’t be named due to health laws but he was identified as Frenchman Benoit Paire by respected French sports daily L’Equipe.
He has since been identified by other players and on social media and Paire was officially replaced in the draw before the tournament started. An email sent to his agent Monday wasn’t returned.
A bubble was put in place at the Grand Slam due to the coronavirus pandemic, with players being shuttled between the tournament grounds and two tournament hotels in Long Island. All but a few are staying at those hotels, with the likes of Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams opting for private accommodation.
After a first-round singles win Monday, Mladenovic called her ordeal in New York a “nightmare.”
Then after a second-round loss Wednesday — when she blew a 6-1 5-1 lead and four match points against Varvara Gracheva — she said she and others in the enhanced protocol plan were being treated like “prisoners.”
“Public health officials of Nassau County, N.Y., have issued quarantine notices for all individuals who had prolonged close contact to a person who previously tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus,” a US Open statement sent by email to CNN said Saturday. “As the players are staying in Nassau County, the quarantine notices prevent any of these individuals from commuting to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City.
“The USTA is obligated to adhere to government guidance at the State, City and County level. All persons who were identified as having prolonged close contact with the infected player will quarantine in their rooms for the remainder of their quarantine period.
“Kristina Mladenovic is one of these individuals, and as the Women’s Doubles competition has begun, the women’s doubles team of Kristina Mladenovic and Timea Babos has been withdrawn from the US Open.”
Delay on Friday
The withdrawal of Mladenovic came after compatriot Adrian Mannarino was eventually allowed to play his singles match Friday. He said he had also been placed in the enhanced protocol plan.
Asked why Mannarino was allowed to play but Mladenovic wasn’t, Widmaier said in an email to CNN it was because the “quarantine notices were served yesterday evening.”
Mladenovic and Babos were due to face Alison Riske and Gabriela Dabrowski in the first round. They made the doubles final at the US Open in 2018.
Parents Got More Time Off Then the Backlash Started
With its offices scheduled to remain closed until at least October and schools restarting online in California, Facebook said in August that the leave policy would remain in place through June 2021 and that employees who had already taken some leave this year would be afforded another 10 weeks next year.
That angered some nonparents. A few wrote openly about how isolated they felt, living alone and not seeing anyone for weeks at a time. The company, they said, seemed less concerned about their needs.
Facebook said all employees could take up to three days to cope with physical or mental health issues without a doctor’s note. It separately offers 30 days of emergency leave for all employees if they need to care for a sick family member. In addition, all Facebook employees receive an unlimited number of sick days and receive at least 21 vacation days a year.
“We’ve added more support for all of our employees and encourage everyone to have open discussions about the challenges they’re facing,” said Liz Bourgeois, a company spokeswoman. “In too many workplaces, trying to hide the added difficulties of caregiving or well-being is yet another burden people have to carry, and we don’t want that to be the case at Facebook.”
Resentment from employees without children about extra parental benefits existed at companies before the pandemic, of course. But the health crisis has amplified that tension. Parents who had normally been able to balance work and home are struggling to help their children learn remotely while still doing their jobs.
In a July survey of 1,700 people conducted by ZipRecruiter, a job-listing and recruiting site, parents said that if schools did not reopen at all this fall, the number of hours they could work would be reduced. Mothers said their working hours would be reduced 9 percent, while fathers said their time would go down 5 percent.
It is a difficult situation for everyone, but “for people to get upset enough to say that ‘I feel this is unfair’ demonstrates a lack of patience, a lack of empathy and a sense of entitlement,” said Laszlo Bock, Google’s former head of people operations, or human resources. He is now the chief executive of the start-up Humu, which aims to help companies manage employees more effectively.
A teardown of a digital pregnancy test has created a buzz after revealing it contained a standard paper test, similar to those used by GPs.
The experiment has raised questions about whether the extra cost of digital pregnancy tests is justified.
Some say the electronics give women a clearer answer but others point to the e-waste created by digital test kits.
The experiment also found the digital test contained a microprocessor more powerful than early home computers.
But the electronics themselves did not play a role in the hormone detection.
image captionThe electronics inside a digital pregnancy test do not analyse urine
image captionThe actual testing is done on a standard paper strip inside the digital stick
image captionLEDs light up the strip and two light sensors detect whether the test has reacted
image captionThe result is then displayed in words on the screen
Hardware researcher Foone decided to find out what was inside a pregnancy test in response to a tweet from a man questioning whether the digital pregnancy test his wife had bought was worth the extra money.
Digital pregnancy tests that display the words “pregnant” or “not pregnant” on a screen often cost about four times as much as ones that simply provide a single or double line on a paper strip to indicate pregnancy.
For the experiment, Foone used a Walmart Equate digital pregnancy test. The inner workings are similar to those in other brands including Procter and Gamble’s Clear Blue and the Boots own-brand digital pregnancy test.
Foone was surprised to find the testing element inside was basically a standard paper test.
Paper test strips detect a hormone called human chorionic gonadotrophic, which is produced during pregnancy. The test strip is treated with a chemical that changes colour when the hormone is present.
The electronics simply read the result from the paper test and then displayed the “pregnant” or “not pregnant” read-out.
The circuit board featured a “surprisingly complicated chip”, more powerful than the CPU used in the original IBM PC.
Foone concluded that digital tests were “probably not worth the money”, given that paper strip tests can cost as little as 20 cents (15p).
“It’s a scam, basically,” they wrote on Twitter. “Computers are cheap now. People are buying the digital one thinking it’s the more accurate fancy model, but it is the same.”
However, others pointed out that paper tests could be misread and judging the result of the test was subjective.
“It is not stupid or wasteful to use a hardware interface to help women with this,” said tech YouTuber Naomi Wu.
Assistant professor of bio-nanotechnology Vittorio Saggiomo agreed that interpreting the lines on a paper test could vary from person to person.
“I can see a faint line, another person doesn’t see anything,” he said.
Another user added: “The information you are supposed to get out of it is literally life-altering. You don’t want to guess the outcome, or have to re-read the manual 10 times to know how to interpret a faint line. I’d happily pay a few euros more.”
Kate Bevan, a tech editor at consumer watchdog Which?, described it as a fascinating experiment but questioned whether the digital tests were creating unnecessary e-waste.
Taking pregnancy tests apart appears to be a fairly frequent phenomenon on Twitter.
image captionThe tablet inside a pregnancy test absorbs moisture and is toxic to eat
Also contained within the test is a moisture-absorbing tablet, to keep the circuitry dry before it is used.
It has been incorrectly suggested on social media that this is an emergency contraceptive pill hidden inside the test.
One video suggesting this has been viewed 4.5 million times on Twitter.
In fact, the moisture-absorbing tablet is toxic and should not be eaten.
Image caption
Zack Smith has created a platform for jobs in the gig economy
“I think a lot of folks like myself never even get a chance, because folks don’t answer their phones, or listen to their idea, but put them in a box they shouldn’t be in,” says Zack Smith, the founder of Boston-based Jobble.
He’s talking about how hard it can be for black tech entrepreneurs to raise money.
But Mr Smith saw it as a challenge.
“It doesn’t matter what box they put me in to begin with, I’ll get out of that box and prove to them I’m bigger and better. I think this fuels me,” he says.
His firm is a US platform for jobs in the gig economy, offering work to those who want flexible hours.
According to a study of 9,874 US business founders by California-based social enterprise RateMyInvestor, only 1% of start-ups receiving venture capital were black.
But Mr Smith was fortunate to have New York-based Harlem Capital Partners, which focuses its investments on minority and women founders.
“They’ve been extremely supportive, as an investor and also a friend and a partner,” he says
Black Lives Matter not only shone a spotlight on policing, but also on other fields, like the technology industry.
In the US, 13% of the workforce is black, but at Google that proportion is just 3.7% and at Facebook 3.8%.
Image copyright Phillip Faraone/Getty Images
Image caption
Marlon Nichols says most funding goes to all-white teams
To understand why this is, follow the money, says Sydney Sykes, a Harvard graduate and venture capital investor who in 2018 co-founded BLCK VC.
Venture capital – that is, early investments in a company of between $1m (£750,000) and $30m in return for shares – is how most new start-ups get out of the blocks.
But 81% of venture capital (VC) funds specialising in making these types of investment lack a black partner.
Partly as a result, 75% of fundraising rounds go to all-white founding teams, says Marlon Nichols, a founding managing partner at California’s MaC Venture Capital.
‘Exciting investments’
Sydney Sykes says investors in tech start-ups “go by their gut feeling, and that’s where bias creeps in”.
She says investors financially back someone if they are “connected with this person”, or perhaps an entrepreneur reminds them of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg.
Image copyright Sydney Sykes
Image caption
Sydney Sykes has started a network of black investors
But she believes “when you close your mind to different types of entrepreneurs, you’re missing out on exciting investments and great companies”.
And Marlon Nichols asserts that ethnically diverse founding teams deliver investors better returns – on average 3.3 times their invested capital, compared with 2 times for all-white founders.
Ms Sykes started a network of black investors.
She and another VC principal, Frederik Groce, held a dinner and invited all the black people they knew in VC in the San Francisco Bay area, as well as other friends.
Image copyright Benedicta Banga
Image caption
Benedicta Banga says funding can be an issue
“We ended up being about 30 people, and most of the black investors in California, which is pretty wild,” she says.
Dinner went on “very much longer than it was supposed to” and by the end they’d started a network to encourage and mentor black people wanting to enter venture capital.
Duplicating excesses?
Black business founder Donnel Baird says raising funding has been “far and away the hardest part”.
Mr Baird’s start-up, Brooklyn-based BlocPower, hires local unemployed workers to replace apartment blocks’ antiquated climate systems with modern heat pumps.
These are 20-50% more efficient than air conditioners and two to three times more efficient than boiler-based furnace systems, he says.
The biggest challenge is documenting each building well enough to attract crowdsourced finance, so systems won’t cost residents anything up front, and can be paid for out of future savings.
Image copyright Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Image caption
Donnel Baird says Silicon Valley is set for a change
They’ve developed a modelling tool called BlocMaps that quickly integrates city data sources with on-site observations, while drawing on the 1,000 buildings they’ve worked on so far in New York.
He says as founders like him make profitable exits, and have access to capital to invest in new start-ups, Silicon Valley will change.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a very long time from now,” says Mr Baird. “I think it’s going to be five years.”
But he asks of his generation of black founders: “Are we going to try to help Silicon Valley build the better world it says it wants to build, or are we going to duplicate the same excesses just with a black person in charge?”
Growth circles
Turning to the UK, lack of funding has also been an issue, one which the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has helped highlight.
In the wake of BLM, many British people, both black and white, want to support black-owned small businesses, says Benedicta Banga, who was born in Zimbabwe and lives in Solihull in the West Midlands.
So she started Blaqbase, a marketplace platform, largely because she wasn’t finding things she needed locally “like makeup for my skin type, and black-owned brands weren’t very visible online”.
Image copyright Blaqbase
Image caption
Blaqbase has gained users in the UK, US, Asia and the Caribbean
Black-owned businesses are the least-funded businesses, she says, and this is problem is compounded if you aren’t visible.
“Then you don’t grow, and you don’t get funded because you’re not growing,” she says.
While she initially thought of the platform as just being UK-based, most of the businesses on it ship worldwide, and her platform has gained users in the US, Asia and the Caribbean, she says.
‘Beacon of hope’
Another British-based tech entrepreneur, Ikenna Ordor, has started a sharing economy platform for higher-end vehicles – Starr Luxury Cars – which has expanded into private jets.
A few of his car clients turned out to be private jet owners, who were keen to earn money from renting their aircraft out.
Image copyright Ikenna Ordor
Image caption
Ikenna Ordor has found his services in demand
When coronavirus struck, these services were suddenly in demand. City workers who would always take the train into London, started to rent cars twice a week to drive to the office, says Mr Ordor.
As a Nigerian-born male, he says there is a stigma associating Nigerians with fraud. He also says black-owned businesses are less likely to be offered bank loans than other companies.
So he ultimately hopes that his example can be a “beacon of hope for young men thinking about starting businesses”.
