• Pay-TV providers could lose nearly $1 billion in revenue as 800,000 customers cut the cord during the next 12 months, according to a new study from the firm cg42.(WSJ)
• How to Make Sure Your Uber Doesn’t Drive Past You
  Avoiding the pin drop can help you get door-to-door service that is actually door-to-door (WSJ)
• Gartner Cape Town: 10 strategic tech trends for 2017
  1. Conversational systems
  2. Augmented and virtual reality
  3. Digital twin
  4. Artifical intelligence and machine learning
  5. Intelligent applications
  6. Intelligent things
  7. Adaptive security
  8. Blockchain and distributed ledger
  9. Mesh app and service architecture
  10. Digital technology platforms
• Drew Houston CEO of Dropbox, if he had a cheat sheet he could give himself at 22, it would have three things on it: “a tennis ball, a circle, and the number 30,000. (BI)
• Spotify launches in Japan, As Billboard noted in an earlier article, physical formats such as CDs and LPs are still popular in Japan — more than 80 percent of music sales were on physical formats in 2015. (Mashable)
• Salesforce.com to Press Regulators to Block Microsoft-LinkedIn Deal
  Company says Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of social network would be anticompetitive (WSJ)
• Google spent $9 billion on cloud business in past 12 months. (Bloomberg)
• Amazon Eyes Living Rooms by Adding Gaming Features to Prime (Bloomberg)
• A Japanese Company Wants to Build a Space Elevator by 2050
• Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it plans to launch a French datacentre region which will be open for customer use in 2017.
• Google’s Got a Plan to Unify the World’s Wi-Fi Hotspots
• iPhone 8 rumors: All glass everything with an OLED display
• According to this VAB report, which aims to address the relationship between streaming, TV and advertisers, just 6 percent of the U.S. population does 87 percent of the streaming.
• Why Siri, Alexa And Cortana Will Destroy SEO
• The Google of product search is…Amazon.
• WinTel market cap, 1995: $105bn GAFA, 2016: $1.9tr

• GoPro Inc. on Monday unveiled two new cameras and its first drone and also cloud storage (WSJ)
• Pokémon to Create Games for Nintendo’s Next System (WSJ)
• Europe Hangs Up on Cross-Border Roaming Fees
  European Commission revises its original plan to limit free roaming to 90 days a year (WSJ)
• MIT scientists built a device that uses radio waves to detect your true emotions—even when you’re not showing any
  The device, which the team is calling EQ-Radio, emits a harmless radio frequency signal. If the waves hit a person in the room, they bounce off, changed very slightly by that person’s breathing and heartbeats. EQ-Radio notes these minute changes in the reflected waves, and uses them to record those vital signs. It does this over and over again, tracking variation in breathing and heart rate. Changes in vital signs like these are often related to how we feel. (QZ)
• Apple approached British supercar-maker McLaren to discuss an acquisition or a strategic investment in the firm.(TheVerge)
• Google or Salesforce could be about to bid for Twitter
• Estimote announces the Mirror, a dongle that turns any TV into a smart beacon system (TechCrunch)
• For every 20 nights an employee sleeps seven hours or more, Aetna rewards them with US$25…
  Aetna brought in Duke University to study the effectiveness of its wellness program, which also includes better sleep information, yoga, and meditation. CEO Mark Bertolini said he’s seen “69 minutes more a month of [worker] productivity on the part of us just investing in wellness and mindfulness. (WEF)
• Expanded Netflix research shows how quickly viewers get hooked to series (TheDrum)
• The importance of Branded IP in Cinema
• Forecasted Market Trend of Image Sensors
• Google’s ‘Show and Tell’ AI can tell you exactly what’s in a photo (almost): System generates captions with nearly 94% accuracy
• Allo brings Google’s smarts to messaging (Tech Crunch)
• The McKinsey Global Institute’s latest research is optimistic that China’s strategy will succeed. It foresees continued growth in the number and income of urban consumers, and predicts that 700 Chinese cities will generate US$7 trillion, or 30 per cent, of global urban consumption growth between now and 2030.
• Netflix’s spooky 12-minute film noir only makes sense to engineers and developers (QZ)
• The cultural differences between East and West, according to one artist (QZ)
• Stephen Hawking: If aliens call, we should be ‘wary of answering‘
• The world’s first hydrogen-powered passenger train is coming to Germany (TheVerge)
• Rosetta will crash into comet 67P next week
• Here’s how Snapchat’s new Spectacles will work

• Your First 10 Hires Must Be All-Stars (Jackie Xu)
• Apple is loading up talent for its push into Google Glass territory (BI)
• 3 of the biggest Android smartwatch makers aren’t launching new devices this year (LG, Huawei, and Lenovo) (BI)
• MIT website makes you decide who a self-driving car should kill in an accident (BI)
• Fidget Cube: A Vinyl Desk Toy (Kickstarter)
• Machine-Learning Can Read Your EEG and Uncover Your Habits (Futurism)
• Canva raises $15 million at a $345 million valuation for its online design tool (VB)
• Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Debut in Pittsburgh
  Up to 1,000 Uber customers in the city will be part of the first real-world tests for regular people (WSJ)
• Apple has fully autonomous vehicles on closed routes, but is rebooting its Car project again (9to5Mac)
• Samsung Plans Software Update to Cut Galaxy Note 7 Fire Risk
  The software would limit the battery to a 60% charge (WSJ)
• Twitter Arrives on Apple TV, Fire TV, Xbox One
  Company shifts into video with new app as it seeks to revive user growth (WSJ)
•  Alexa and Amazon Echo Now Available in the UK and Germany (VB)
• The 10 best launch partners for Amazon Echo’s Alexa (Wired UK)
• Raspberry Pi just sold its 10 millionth computer (The credit card-sized computer sold 100,000 on the first day it went on sale in 2012) (Wired UK)
• Apple is likely to continue making iPhones without headphone jacks, and next year’s iPhone will have a full-screen face with the virtual button built directly into the screen, according to two people at the company who spoke on condition of anonymity because the product details are private. (NYTimes)
• Unearth millions of years of natural history in new @GoogleArts exhibit: http://g.co/naturalhistory
• Atlas robot adds high-wire balancing to its list of human tricks (Mashable)
• The combined revenues of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP are still less than $15B for a market penetration of just 1%-2% of the Total Available Market (TAM).
  (Forbes)
• Technicians are now using Microsoft Hololens to repair elevators.
• Google acquires Urban Engines to bring its location-based analytics to Google Maps (VB)
• Germany’s first smart bridge to open next month (RW)
• Spotify hits 40 million paying subscribers, up 10 million in 6 months (VentureBeat)
  • Spotify, 40 m, Sep 2016
  • Apple Music 17 m, Sep 2016
  • Pandora 3.9 m, Jun 2016
  • Rhapsody, Napster  3.5 m, Dec 2015
  • Tidal 3m, Mar 2016
  • Deezer 3m, Jun 2015 (Source:Business Insider and Company Announcements)
• Tesla Motors has new Autopilot Software, primary information will be derived from radar.
  To understand the update, it is important to know how AutoPilot previously worked. A rear-view mirror camera, front bumper radar sensor and 12 ultrasonic sensors developed an image of the car’s surroundings. AutoPilot looked at the image from the camera, to recognize signs, obstacles, and movement and react accordingly.
  In AutoPilot 8.0, Tesla has moved the primary information sensor from the camera to radar. The benefits of this move include six times more information per object, ability to work well in fog and heavy rain, and longer range. (ReadWrite)
• This pioneering tech company figured how to make work-from-home work (QZ)
  Automattic, the maker of WordPress.com
  With a staff of 450 spread over 45 countries, Automattic is often regarded as one of the largest and most successful examples of a fully distributed workforce.
• Report : Ten Digital Ideas, Oliver Wyman [PDF]
  • MOVE AT CLOCK SPEED
    Companies need to behave like digital disruptors | p. 4
  • BEWARE OF DIGITAL BUZZ
    What it takes for complex innovations like blockchain
    to work out | p. 6
  • SHARE OR SHRIVEL
    Why no business can ignore the rise of the sharing economy | p. 8
  • BECOME DIGITALLY LEAN
    German manufacturing is leading a digital industrial revolution | p.10
  • BE MODULAR
    A lesson for financial services | p.12
  • PREPARE FOR THE NEW DRONE DATA WAVE
    Companies are turning drones into a competitive advantage | p.14
  • DON’T JUST DIGITIZE, HUMANIZE
    Companies’ digital futures will depend on emotional bonds as
    much as functional superiority | p.16
  • STAY AHEAD OF SMARTER APPS
    Make way for uber-trucking | p.18
  • LEARN FROM ONLINE RETAILERS
    Personalized recommendation engines are coming to healthcare | p. 20
  • GO TO CYBER EXTREMES
    What to do when digitalization goes wrong | p. 22

• Google to buy cloud software company Apigee for $625 million (Reuters)
• Elon Musk calls SpaceX blast a ‘most difficult, complex failure’ (Reuters)
• Turning vans into rolling distribution hubs for package-dropping robots could greatly improve the efficiency of delivery networks.( Technology Review)
• a16z Podcast: All about Microservices (thx Murat for the link)
• Sony announces powerhouse PlayStation 4 Pro and slimmer PS4. More than 43 million PlayStation 4 consoles have been sold to date (WSJ)
• Google’s DeepMind makes progress in computer-generated speech (FT)
  Researchers usually avoid modelling raw audio because it ticks so quickly: typically 16,000 samples per second or more, with important structure at many time-scales.
• When You Change the World and No One Notices (Morgan Housel)
• Which Industries Are the Most Digital (and Why)? (HBR)
• Twitter launches an Alexa app
• Sending a container from Shanghai to Europe costs half what it did in 2014 (Economist)

• Apple’s iPhone 7 Event in Under 5 Minutes

• The Uber effect: the cost of a New York taxi license has halved in two years
• Cassandra keeps growing at Apple, now 115,000+ nodes in production
• Smartphones vs Digital Cameras

• The rocket explosion Thursday that destroyed a Facebook Inc. satellite (estimated cost 195 mio USD) marks a significant setback to the social media company’s nascent effort to spread internet access to unconnected parts of the world. (WSJ)
• When a Commercial Rocket Blows Up, Who Pays?
• #IoT revenues still less than 1.5% of revenue for even the most advanced telcos.
• Google suspends Project Ara (Modular Smartphone)
• Samsung recalls Galaxy Note 7 phones after battery fires
• BlackBerry teams with Samsung for ‘spy-proof’ tablet for Germany
• Alibaba’s Tech-Hub Hometown Hosts the World’s Leaders
• 10 Free Data Visualization Tools
• Spotify Can’t Live on $10 a Month
• Amazon Dash one-button device arrives in Britain
• Ship Operators Explore Autonomous Sailing
• Google Takes on Uber With New Ride-Share Service
• An Algorithm to Predict a Bestseller (5000 books, 30 years, 2800 features, %80 accuracy)
• Rocket Internet Loss Widens Following Write-Downs
• Why Utility Poles are so important to the future of the Internet
• Several scientists familiar with Google’s progress, including Devitt, suggest that a functioning 50-qubit quantum chip, enough to overpower conventional supercomputers at a certain kind of calculation, could be ready by as soon as the end of 2017.
• Short URLs Considered Harmful for Cloud Services
• How to fill out security questions.
• Stanford : One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (2016 Report)
• One-word article in Friday’s New York Times
  
• Electric cars in : 2009: ~6,000 2015: ~1.2 Mn 

• Big banks plan to coin new digital currency (FT)
• What would happen if your country issued a digital currency like Bitcoin? Bank of England Simulation (WEF)
• The science of habit-forming Products
• 40 Techniques Used by Data Scientists
• Kobe Bryant’s 13 Venture Capital Investments (WSJ)
• Sandvine Report: North American Homes Average Seven Active Connected Devices, PCs now account for less than 25% of network traffic
• Brainstorm Cards – 52 Ways to Generate New Ideas [PDF]
• Singapore became the first country in the world to launch a self-driving taxi service (WSJ)
• Leadership May Not Be the Problem with Your Innovation Team
• Apple Plans iPhone for Japan With Tap-to-Pay for Subways
• LinkedIn Enters The Gig Economy With An Upwork Competitor (Fast Company)
• Domino’s wants to start delivering pizzas by drone in New Zealand (BI)
• Amazon releases auto buying research tool (Tech Crunch)
• Tesla Unveils Electric-Car Battery With a 315-Mile Range
  The company says its new ‘Ludicrous’ P100D will be the ‘fastest car in the world’ (WSJ)
• Tesla Motors Inc. raised the price of its semi-autonomous Autopilot option by $500, the latest move by the Silicon Valley auto maker to adjust prices and options on its electric vehicles…Tesla’s Autopilot feature will now cost $3,000 (WSJ)
• Cloud-computing provider Rackspace Hosting Inc. is being taken private by private-equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC for $4.3 billion (WSJ)
• Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey says these 7 books changed his life
• Swiss watch exports declined for a 13th consecutive month in July as Hong Kong, traditionally the biggest market for luxury timepieces, slipped to second place for the first time in almost a decade.
• Soon you’ll be able to play ‘over 400’ PlayStation games on your PC
• The Elements of Value [HBR]
  …A rigorous model of consumer value allows a company to come up with new combinations of value that its products and services could deliver…identified 30 “elements of value”—fundamental attributes in their most essential and discrete forms. These elements fall into four categories: functional, emotional, life changing, and social impact.
• 

• a half second difference in page load times can make a 10% difference in sales for an online retailer.
• Machine Intelligence 2.0 in charts and graphs (Venture Beat)
• All U.S. Energy Consumption in a Giant Diagram
• Seven months into the year, videogame deals totaled $25.1 billion, eclipsing the previous full-year record of $14.9 billion in 2014, according to Digi-Capital LLC. Of the deals, 88% have been for mobile-game makers, including three acquisitions totaling $18.9 billion. (WSJ)
• Every major cable TV company lost subscribers last quarter
  Top pay-TV operators lost 665,000 subscribers in Q2 2016. (Arstechnica)
• Uber’s route to the driverless future just got a little clearer. In the next few weeks, Uber will begin deploying a 100-car test fleet of autonomous Volvos in Pittsburgh (beating Google to the consumer market in the process). (Recode)
• Uber paid $680 million for self-driving truck company Otto for the tech, not the trucks (Recode)
• Uber and Volvo commit $300 million to developing autonomous cars together (Recode)
• Rakuten buys struggling bitcoin startup Bitnet to create a ‘blockchain research lab (TechCrunch)
• Tencent, the owner of popular social messaging app WeChat, overtook e-commerce giant Alibaba to become China’s most valuable technology company on Thursday. (cnbc) (2016 Q2 Results pdf)
• New lithium metal batteries could make smartphones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long. (MIT)
• DIY Algorithmic programming
• Onboarding With The IKEA Effect: How To Use UX Friction To Build Retention
• This is why Walmart is purchasing jet.com
• Eleven Reasons To Be Excited About The Future of Technology
• Amazon now lets you rent its virtual desktops, Amazon WorkSpaces, by the hour (Tech Crunch)

• Rumor has it Apple’s next iPhone may be waterproof (QZ)
• SpaceX successfully lands its sixth Falcon 9 rocket after launch
  and the fourth drone ship landing (The Verge)
• Innovation has become the key to survival. A Standard & Poor’s company can expect to survive just 15 years. That’s down from 67 years in 1920. By 2027, 75% of the S&P 500 firms today will be replaced by new ones. (WEF)
• Google is building a completely new operating system. As in, not just an upgrade to Android or Chrome OS, but instead, a new system that’s not derived from the Linux kernel. It’s called Fuchsia. (The Next Web)
• How does fog computing differ from edge computing?
  … When compared to edge computing, fog computing is more scalable as it gives a centralized processing body a more big-picture view of the network as it has multiple data points feeding it information….
  … To better explain how these computing methods differ, we will examine a simple use case of a smart, robotic vacuum cleaner… As it relates to our vacuum, a centralized fog node or IoT gateway would receive information continuously from the dirt-detecting sensors, process that information, and deploy the vacuum when and where it determines that dirt is present… In our vacuum scenario, an edge computing solution would enable each dirt-detecting sensor to determine itself whether or not dirt is present and signal the vacuum alerting it of such. (Ryan Matthew Pierson Read Write)
• The head of Google’s Brain team is more worried about the lack of diversity in artificial intelligence than an AI apocalypse (Recode)
• World’s largest vertical farm grows without soil, sunlight or water in Newark… It makes a befitting setting for a company that is promising to increase crop yields by as much as 70 times compared to traditional field farms, without using any pesticides or fertilizers…. (The Guardian)
• IBM’s New Artificial Neurons a Big Step Toward Powerful Brain-LikeComputers
• Microsoft Research working on the ultimate wearable: a tattoo to control devices remotely

DuoSkin:Functional, stylish on-skin user interfaces from MIT Media Lab on Vimeo.