Curation of the news and articles I read this week
- Finnish breakthrough: Making protein out of thin air and electricity
- Google now blasts autoplay videos straight into your Search results
- Adobe is ending Flash support in 2020, tells everyone to jump ship
- Nearly 40 million Americans use Roku, beating out Google’s Chromecast
- Alphabet has nearly doubled its headcount since 2013 to more than 75,000
- Google leads the world in digital and mobile ad revenue
- Even with 45,000 robots, Amazon is working hard to find human warehouse labor
- Softbank Said to Take Stake in Roomba Maker iRobot
- “…Musk’s master plan is to help owners add their vehicles to a shared fleet at the touch of a button. Instead of sitting unused 22 hours a day, the car will be able to drive itself and passengers, to earn money for you while you sleep, work, or go on vacation…”
- The Biggest Facial Recognition System in the World Is Rolling Out in China
- Amazon Hub: A package delivery locker specifically for blocks of flats
- SpaceX now valued at $21 billion as launch market dominance looms
- “…The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved institutional bitcoin derivatives platform Ledgerx LLC as the first federally-regulated bitcoin options exchange and clearinghouse. Ledgerx plans to start trading bitcoin options in the fall and ether options a few months after that….”
- “…How Blockchain Can Make Identification Borderless and Immutable…a blockchain platform for digital identification called BanQu…Banqu estimates 2.7 billion people around the world lack an economic identity. But of those 2.7 billion, 60 percent have mobile phones…”
- Google Has Started Adding Imagination to Its DeepMind AI “…One of the ways they tested the new algorithms was with a 1980s video game called Sokoban, in which players have to push crates around to solve puzzles. Some moves can make the level unsolvable, so advanced planning is needed, and the AI wasn’t given the rules of the game beforehand.The researchers found their new ‘imaginative’ AI solved 85 percent of the levels it was given, compared with 60 percent for AI agents using older approaches…”
- LinkedIn data can predict how likely you are to quit, and it’s being sued to keep it public
- Bitcoin explained in emoji (part1) (part2)
- Amazon reportedly acquired GameSparks for $10M to build out its gaming muscle… “…GameSparks is a “backend as a service” for game developers to build various features like leaderboards into games, and then manage them, all in the cloud…”
- Facebook active users 2.01 B, Whatsapp 1.3 B, Messenger 1.2 B, Instagram 700 M
- WhatsApp is building out its business team to start bringing in revenue
- Oculus, the virtual reality company owned by Facebook, has created its first VR movie
- AWS, $16 billion annual revenue run rate “…A recent report from the startup CB Insights showed 5,600 open job listings for the AWS unit…”