The Daily Crunch 09/22/16

Zuckerberg and Chan take on all diseases everywhere, while police and Twitter both take steps towards more transparency. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for September 22, 2016. And if you're not a full-stack drone service provider, do you even really exist?

1. Zuckerberg and Chan want to end disease for a bargain

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a noble undertaking, since spending money on something other than yourself for the purposes of good is... good. But the announcement of a $3 billion investment understandably struck some people as odd, since it was targeted at "ending disease."

People thought headlines were missing a word, but no – the goal is really to end ALL disease. Within our children's lifetime. That's a big ask, and frankly, $3 billion isn't anywhere near enough. But it's still a lot of money, and will help with the larger gaol.

2. Police data on use of force finally seeing the light of day

Amazingly, data around how much force police were using in the course of the duty, and when, hasn't really been made available in the past. Which is funny because police are a public service, available and responsible to the public, so the public has some claim on a right to that info. Megan describes the sad state of that info's public availability until now, and explains why it's changing – slowly.

3. Tesla takes the fight to Michigan

Michigan has been among the U.S. states most resistive of Tesla's efforts to upend the dealership model and sell direct. Michigan-based Tesla owners can't even get their cars serviced in-state; they have to cross state lines for anything other than a software update. That might change now that Tesla has exhausted all other options and filed suit against top Michigan state officials. Hopefully this helps correct this obvious cronyism among the state and dealerships/other automakers.

4. Drone buddies

Airware and Redbird are joining forces to offer full-stack drone services. Redbird, a drone analytics providers, sold to U.S drone giant Airware to give the latter company a deeper bench in terms of service offerings, and that means they should be more competitive in the emerging drone services space. Remember when there wasn't even a "drone services space?"

5. Twitter transparent

Twitter has a new transparency report, and it's good, making for a more user-friendly document, instead of something that just ticks the box of actually having a transparency report to begin with. At least Twitter's doing something right.

6. Is Apple getting Lit?

Apple acquisition rumours were flying yesterday, and the NYT says Lit Motors is also in its sights. The electric two-wheel vehicle startup actually debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in 2012, and I remember it being pretty cool while watching from the front row. But does Apple need the tech? Maybe for the electric drivetrain and battery smarts, if its car plans are real.

7. Tinder finally gets that people want to swipe on everything

A new Tinder mobile app doesn't do dating, but it does take the swipe concept and apply it to social polling. Basically it lets you ask friends in iMessage to rate photos, which sounds like it could go real bad real quick. But maybe people are better than using this in horrible ways. But they aren't.