Weekly#343

  • Amazon launches Amazon Care, a virtual and in-person healthcare offering for employees
  • The Guardian: The 100 best books of the 21st century
  • Grammarly gets a tone detector
  • “…companies all have multi-class stock structures, meaning that some of their stock — usually that which belongs to the founders — has much more powerful voting rights than others and therefore much more impact when it comes to company decisions…”
  • Paperspace adds machine learning model development pipeline to GPU service
  • Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes
  • Windows 10 is used on over 900 million devices
  • How Amazon’s Ring is creating a surveillance network with video doorbells
  • Car subscription service Cluno discloses €140M in debt financing
  • Equinor wins opportunity to develop the world’s largest offshore wind farm
  • Struggling Farmers See Bright Spot in Solar ($)…“…Farmers have two options for adding solar power on their farms: lease land for energy companies to generate power to funnel electricity into the grid, as the Nielsens are doing; or install their own solar panels to cut their electricity bills. Both methods can amount to more than $1,000 a month in improved margins, according to farmers and renewable-energy advocates…”
  • Energy and food together: Under solar panels, crops thrive
  • Generate income by generating power – Hong Kong homes close to selling solar power under new ‘feed-in tariff’ scheme
  • Alibaba unveils self-developed AI chip for cloud computing services
  • IKEA expects to offer home solar panels in stores across all its markets in 2025

  • From Ben Evans
  • Pinterest’s Lens can now recognize 2.5 billion home and fashion objects
  • Facebook experiments with AI-powered styling program
  • Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products ($)



Weekly#342

  • iOS 13 is now available to download
  • CRISPR removes antibiotic resistance gene from bacterium
  • Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian as part of going carbon-neutral by 2040
  • Airbnb says it will go public next year
  • Automattic raises $300 million at $3 billion valuation from Salesforce Ventures
  • The man behind Tesla’s Powerwall is now pitching an all-in-one power management system for homes
  • Amazon is bringing a cash-based checkout option, Amazon PayCode, to the US
  • IBM will soon launch a 53-qubit quantum computer
  • Amazon launches Amazon Music HD with lossless audio streaming
  • Amazon/food sales: perdition postponed (FT: paywall)
  • …And now scientists believe the changing climate may put our brains at risk. A new analysis predicts that by 2100, increasing water temperatures brought on by a warming planet could result in 96 percent of the world’s population not having access to an omega-3 fatty acid crucial to brain health and function…
  • Silent Skies: Billions of North American Birds Have Vanished…an overall decline of 29 percent from 1970.
  • Mini Transformers: Scientists Have Created a Robot Made of Robots
  • Fiat Chrysler will set up an experimental fleet of up to 700 electric cars to test vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, which allows power grids to use energy stored in car batteries to face demand during peak hours.
  • Fintech Company Stripe Joins Silicon Valley Elite With $35 Billion Valuation (WSJ: paywall)

Weekly#341

  • Apple iPhone 11 event
  • Disney CEO Bob Iger resigns from Apple’s board of directors
  • Will Your Uploaded Mind Still Be You? (paywall)
  • Yelp adds predictive wait times and a new way for restaurants to share updates
  • The mainframe business is alive and well, as IBM announces new z15
  • Apple hid a secret message in its latest YouTube video
  • Electric cars are finally taking a (tiny) bite out of combustion engine sales
  • A Swiss house built by robots promises to revolutionize the construction industry
  • Six questions to ask yourself when reading about AI



Weekly#340

  • Modern applications at AWS
  • Amazon 2018 Letter to Shareholders
  • How Amazon’s Shipping Empire Is Challenging UPS and FedEx (paywall)
  • Fraudsters Used AI to Mimic CEO’s Voice in Unusual Cybercrime Case (paywall)
  • The Marketing Hype Cycle
  • This DIY Implant Lets You Stream Movies From Inside Your Leg
  • The next Apple Watch could feature sleep tracking
  • UPS introduces hybrid, long-range trucks that change modes based on where they are
  • Porsche expands on-demand subscription plans to four more cities
  • Opportunities for the global semiconductor market…growing market share by embracing AI…[PWC PDF]
  • YouTube launches a dedicated Fashion vertical
  • The US government projects the number of workers over 75 will double in the next decade
  • 60 Uses of Graphene – The Ultimate Guide to Graphene’s (Potential) Applications in 2019
  • Samsung to Launch Smartphone Meant to Make Blockchain Friendlier (paywall)
  • Revenue from recorded music in the U.S. rose 18% to $5.4 billion in the first half of the year (paywall)
  • The Time Netflix Considered Selling Itself to Amazon for Peanuts…In 1998, Netflix’s co-founders made a trip to Seattle that could have changed the world as we know it (paywall)

Weekly#339

  • Netflix tests human-driven curation with launch of ‘Collections’
  • Sphero has acquired littleBits
  • Time: World Greatest Places: 2019 including Troy Museum 
  • Microsoft Azure’s cloud regions in Switzerland are now open for business
  • UPS invests in autonomous trucking company
  • Rwanda to phase out gas motorcycle-taxis for e-motos
  • Eero updates subscription plans.
  • Fitbit is launching a $10 premium subscription service
  • Lego is piloting audio and braille building instructions
  • Duolingo is now offering a beta version of Latin courses
  • Utility death spirals and energy communities
  • What most Americans are looking for in a new home: solar panels
  • Kids are becoming emotionally attached to robots
  • Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment…”…From now, house style guide recommends terms such as ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’…”
  • Vaping-linked lung disease cases jump from 94 to 153 in 5 days, CDC says
  • Australian Government invest 15 million in Evie ultra-fast EV charging network
  • Coursera makes its first acquisition, Rhyme Softworks, to power new Coursera Labs offering
  • SpaceX’s Starhopper Successfully Completes Final Test Flight…”Starhopper will never see space, but SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hopes its successor, called Starship, will eventually transport up to 100 people (and roughly 150 tons of cargo) to far-off destinations such as the Moon or Mars…”

Weekly#338

  • Steam balloons could be used to launch satellites
  • Mobile gaming is a $68.5 billion global business, and investors are buying in…Global gaming has seen $9.6 billion in investments
  • Splunk acquires cloud monitoring service SignalFx for $1.05B
  • Porsche invests in ‘low visibility’ sensor startup TriEye
  • China’s satellite tests pulsar navigation for future deep space exploration…The positioning accuracy in the experiments reached 10 km,
  • Starbucks, monetary superpower
  • Android ditches desserts as Q becomes 10
  • German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
  • Matrix 4’ Officially a Go With Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Lana Wachowski
  • Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays
  • Nasa mission to Jupiter moon Europa moves step closer to launch…Mission that could shed light on possibility of life on icy rock is expected to lift off in 2025

Weekly#337

  • Lumineye helps first responders identify people through walls
  • Google discloses its acquisition of mobile learning app Socratic as it relaunches on iOS
  • Y Combinator-backed Holy Grail is using machine learning to build better batteries
  • Facebook is starting to sell streaming video subscriptions — but not from HBO or Showtime
  • UPS Has Been Delivering Cargo in Self-Driving Trucks for Months And No One Knew
  • Inside the effort to print lungs and breathe life into them with stem cells
  • The world’s first solar road has turned out to be a colossal failure that’s falling apart and doesn’t generate enough energy, according to a report
  • Free and open-source tools for analog filmmaking
  • A hotter planet will make solar power less efficient
  • The energy transition is underway: 10 charts tell the story

Weekly#336

  • With warshipping, hackers ship their exploits directly to their target’s mail room
  • John Fallon explains why the education company is pivoting to digital textbooks
  • BCG Decoding Digital Talent (Thanks to Can)
  • LightSail 2, Pushed by Sunlight, Raises Its Orbit by 10,500 Feet in Just Two Weeks
  • Finland, Solar Foods, is planning to bring to market a new protein powder, Solein, made out of CO₂, water and electricity. It’s a high-protein, flour-like ingredient that contains 50 percent protein content, 5–10 percent fat, and 20–25 percent carbs.
  • Hyundai’s first car with a solar roof is available in Korea…The solar panels are expected to charge 30 to 60 percent of the battery per day. With six hours of daily charging, it could theoretically increase drivers’ travel distance by an extra 1,300 km (about 807 miles) per year.
  • Xiaomi Is Developing A Smartphone With Solar Panel
  • Tokyo offers $1 billion research grant for human augmentation, cyborg tech…Artificial hibernation is also of interest to the Japanese government.
  • Apple rolls out Apple Card Preview to select users
  • Apple expands its bug bounty, increases maximum payout to $1M
  • Samsung is bringing PC game streaming to the Note 10
  • GitHub gets a CI/CD service
  • Slack, Zoom, Dropbox, Office: Which US presidential campaigns are using what

Weekly#335

  • TikTok-parent ByteDance is getting into mobile search
  • Revolut launches stock trading in limited release
  • Amazon acquires flash-based cloud storage startup E8 Storage
  • Amazon develops a new way to help Alexa answer complex questions.. related blog post
  • Prodly announces $3.5M seed to automate low-code cloud deployments
  • Spotify hits 108M paying users and 232M overall, but its average revenue per user declines
  • Apple’s services revenue grows 13% year-over-year
  • Consumer internet companies are easy to understand, but hard to create
  • Vizio rolls out its Apple AirPlay and HomeKit integrations to its SmartCast TV platform
  • Hello Heart raises $12 million for at-home monitoring and behavioral treatment for hypertension
  • DeepMind creates algorithm to predict kidney damage in advance (paywall)
  • News consumption in the UK
  • Artificial intelligence is quietly disrupting the fragrance development process
  • A Wikipedia for Generation Z…Famous Birthdays has become a go-to database of teen culture—and is ushering in a whole new generation of stars.
  • AI’s new workforce: the data-labelling industry spreads globally (paywall)
  • The Hottest Phones for the Next Billion Users Aren’t Smartphones…First-time internet consumers are connecting to the web on a new breed of device costing about $25
  • Digital Platforms Inquiry [PDF]
  • The $60 Gadget That’s Changing Electronic Music
  • LightSail 2 becomes first spacecraft to change orbit using sunlight
  • How Robots Change the World, Oxford Economics [PDF]
  • How to prepare children for the jobs of the future
  • Physical factors such as natural light, temperature and air quality can increase the learning progress of primary school pupils by as much as 16% in a year.
  • Amazon as experiment

Weekly#334

  • Burgernomics: The Big Mac index  was invented by The Economist in 1986 as a lighthearted guide to whether currencies are at their “correct” level.
  • Apple Dominates App Store Search Results, Thwarting Competitors…Searches for ‘music,’ ‘audiobooks’ and other categories rank company apps first, a process some developers find unfair; Apple says algorithm doesn’t give own products an advantage…(paywall)
  • YouTube probably generates $16 billion to $25 billion in annual revenue, making the video service big enough to crack the top half of the Fortune 500.
  • AWS Well-Architected Labs
  • Apple’s spending $1 billion to buy most of Intel’s 5G modem business
  • Moon has more water ice than previously thought…UCLA study suggests that there may be enough water to sustain a future lunar settlement
  • Carbon nanotube films created at Rice University enable method to recycle waste heat
  • AT&T loses nearly 1 million TV customers after raising DirecTV prices
  • Netflix thought it would have 5 million new subscribers this quarter. Instead it added 2.7 million
  • Unity, now valued at $6B, raising up to $525M
  • AWS yearly run rate is $33 billion…Google Cloud’s run rate is now over $8B
  • Why Innovation Labs Fail, and How to Ensure Yours Doesn’t
  • Stackery lets AWS Lambda developers debug their serverless programs locally on a laptop
  • AWS gets a chatbot
  • SoftBank Rolls Out Second Tech Megafund, With Apple Among Top Investors…Japanese banks and Microsoft are among those that have committed to $108 billion Vision Fund 2 (paywall)
  • Tesla says its new self-driving chip will help make its cars autonomous