in weekly

Weekly#162

  • Facebook F8 Summary
  • Project: Raspberry Pi + Alexa Voice Service (Github)
  • The Doomsday Seed Vault [video]
  • Chatbots — the name for robots that simulate human conversation — have been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks amid a flurry of new experiments in how they might be used to shape the future of shopping. Retail heavyweights Sephora and H&M recently launched bots on messaging app Kik that help shoppers browse and buy their products. Taco Bell showed off its TacoBot, a way to use the messaging app Slack to place a meal order. And on Tuesday, Facebook announced it has created a platform that allows companies to develop bots that run within its Messenger app, which has some 900 million users worldwide. (Washington Post)
  • Facebook’s bots are an ‘existential threat’ to Apple, says Wall Street analyst (Business Insider)
  • Apple could stop the new Facebook Messenger before it’s even begun (Business Insider)
  • Netflix says Geography, Age, and Gender are “Garbage” for Predicting Taste
    “Geography, age, and gender? We put that in the garbage heap,” VP of product Todd Yellin said. Instead, viewers are grouped into “clusters” almost exclusively by common taste, and their Netflix homepages highlight the relatively small slice of content that matches their taste profile. (Fortune)