Weekly#349

  • Elon Musk says building the first sustainable city on Mars will take 1,000 Starships and 20 years
  • Yandex has built a fleet of self-driving food-delivery robots
  • researchers from the University of Oxford recently determined that the probability of our entire species going extinct in any given year is as high as one in 14,000.
  • Electric cars are changing the cost of driving
  • Canso spaceport partners with U.S. company to recycle rockets in space…including hotels, research parks, fuel depots and storage centres.
  • Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Cheats
  • Kepler achieves a world-first for satellite broadband with 100Mbps connection to the Arctic
  • OpenAI has published the text-generating AI it said was too dangerous to share
  • Microsoft Hololens 2
  • SoftBank Reveals $6.5 Billion Loss From Uber, WeWork Turmoil

Weekly#348

  • Massive, AI-Powered Robots Are 3D-Printing Entire Rockets
  • Google’s got a chief decision scientist. Here’s what she does
  • Ikea Catalog Covers | Argos Catalog
  • The five keys to a successful Google team
  • 1.5 Million Packages a Day: The Internet Brings Chaos to N.Y. Streets
  • McDonald’s delivery is now available across 950 of its sites across the UK and accounts for just over 10% of all its UK business
  • Google is acquiring Fitbit for $2.1 billion
  • Small satellite startup Kepler opens sign-ups for its IoT developer kits
  • Blade Runner: How well did the film predict 2019’s tech?
  • Google Introduces Huge Universal Language Translation Model: 103 Languages Trained on Over 25 Billion Examples

Weekly#347

  • AWS Customers Rack Up Hefty Bills for Moving Data (paywall)
  • Google Claims a Quantum Breakthrough That Could Change Computing
  • Tesla Returns To Profitability, Smashes Analyst Estimates
  • “The Last of Us Part II” is now scheduled to arrive on PlayStation 4 on May 29, 2020
  • Some of the universe’s heavier elements are created by neutron star collisions
  • Netflix launches Rs 199 ($2.8) mobile-only monthly plan in India
  • An Uber boss insists its flying taxis will be fully functional by 2023, and says the company is talking with NASA to find a way to manage air traffic
  • The think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative reported that four in five coal plants in the European Union were unprofitable and utilities faced losses of nearly 6.6 billion euros this year.
  • Apple Pay Overtakes Starbucks as Most Popular Mobile Payment Platform in the US
  • No one expected The Athletic could get people to pay for sports news. Now it has 600,000 subscribers.
  • ‘Whoa, it worked!!’: Elon Musk successfully tweeted using a Starlink satellite for the first time…SpaceX plans to start offering Starlink broadband services in 2020
  • “If you’re creating a paid-for product, you have to start charging from day one.”
  • AI Weekly: In China, you can no longer buy a smartphone without a face scan
  • Archive of memos
  • Gartner’s top 10 strategic predictions for 2020

Weekly#346

  • SpaceX seeks permission to launch 30,000 more satellites
  • Rocket Lab successfully launches fifth Electron rocket this year
  • Generation Z doesn’t always want to hear from you, they’re less likely than millennials to be okay with being reachable at all times.
  • University of Artificial Intelligence launched in Abu Dhabi
  • Few aeroplanes land automatically but new systems could make this the norm
  • Netflix Q3 earnings exceed estimates, despite disappointing US subscriber growth
  • Volvo unveils its first electric car, the XC40 Recharge
  • Canva, now valued at $3.2 billion, launches an enterprise product
  • Google Maps adds more Waze-like features, including driving-incident reports
  • Nintendo announced Thursday that they had sold 15 million units of Switch console in North America
  • HBO Max scores all 21 Studio Ghibli films


Weekly#345

  • Virgin Orbit plans to launch first commercial small satellites to Mars
  • Uber’s newest feature alerts drivers that pets will be joining the ride
  • (Pivot) Dyson kills its electric car project and turns to solid-state batteries…Dyson  said it will end its electric vehicle project after determining it could not make the car commercially viable or find a buyer…
  • NASA Administrator ‘very confident’ SpaceX crew launch could happen in early 2020
  • Steam will soon let you play local-only multiplayer games with far off friends
  • Amazon Music arrives on Apple TV
  • Get ready to see more looping videos on Spotify, as Canvas launches into beta
  • Yandex introduces an Echo Dot-style smart speaker
  • Chinese citizens will soon need to scan their face before they can access internet services or get a new phone number
  • Elon Musk says that NASA is free to share all SpaceX IP with ‘anyone it wants
  • Autonomous vehicles won’t save cities without sharing
  • Nanoscale 3D printing technique is 1,000 times faster
  • Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan
  • Robots to Replace 200,000 Banking Jobs: Report

Weekly#344

  • NASA’s first all-electric experimental X-plane is ready for testing
  • Maisie Williams’ startup Daisie is preparing for new partnerships, funding
  • HTC stopped innovating on smartphones, new CEO admits
  • NASA shares 3D Moon data for CG artists and creators
  • PayPal is the first company to drop out of the Facebook-led Libra Association
  • Amazon’s video app is back in Apple’s App Store. But get ready to see more streaming fights.
  • 3D-printed rocket company to begin commercial launches in 2021
  • The Netherlands Surpasses Wildest Predictions For Tesla Model 3 Sales
  • Nasa invites bids from firms to build lunar lander for 2024 mission
  • The rise of the financial machines (Paywall) “…Funds run by computers that follow rules set by humans account for 35% of America’s stockmarket, 60% of institutional equity assets and 60% of trading activity…”
  • “…Rising precious metals prices are luring criminals to target  catalytic converters which use platinum, palladium or rhodium…”
  • Text-generating AI is getting better and better — but it’s not yet contest-winning good.
  • Watch the Open Future Festival


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)