• T-Mobile plans pay-TV service in 2018 fueled by Layer3 TV acquisition
• SpaceX launches a reused Dragon atop a reused Falcon 9 for the first time
• Alexa skills top 25,000 in the U.S. as new launches slow
• UX: Hide/Show Passwords
• UX How to with Luke Wroblewski
• Apple has finally turned on its podcast analytics feature
• Here come the Facebook pre-roll video ads
• Apple picks up a new space drama from the creator of ‘Battlestar Galactica’
• Google Searches for Path Back to China With Artificial-Intelligence Lab
• Why Apple’s Shazam acquisition could be a big deal for the HomePod
• SoftBank to Invest Around $500 Million More in OneWeb Satellite-Internet Venture
• WSJ: “…$390 Million funding will enable  the supplier of a laser technology (vertical-cavity-surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs) used in its iPhone X’s facial-recognition capabilities, to speed up production and boost its R&D efforts, Apple said…”
• Facebook is paying WWE to stream some professional wrestling
• Anyone can now build augmented reality face masks inside Facebook. Facebook is opening up its AR platform to everyone
• Disney is acquiring Fox’s film and TV divisions for $52.4 billion…Disney details overarching direct-to-consumer plan possible through Fox deal…”…Iger added that this will allow Hulu to “become an even more viable competitor” to existing services, likely referencing Netflix and Amazon Prime Video without naming them directly. He also said that Disney will, of course, be “flowing more content in Hulu’s direction” now that it owns a controlling 39 percent majority stake…“…Hulu has 32 million subscribers (April 2017)
• Disney CEO Wagers That Traditional TV Can Pave Way to Future
• Disney Is About to Become the ‘Walmart of Hollywood
• Andreessen Horowitz has a new, $450 million bio fund
• Andrew Ng’s Landing.ai wants to bring artificial intelligence to the manufacturing industry, starting with Foxconn
• Nvidia and construction giant Komatsu partner on AI for job site safety
• China’s CCTV surveillance network took just 7 minutes to locate a person…“…There are some 170 million CCTV cameras across the country, and that’s tipped to grow more than three-fold with 400 million more set to be installed by 2020…”
• Elon Musk’s Boring Company is reportedly starting to dig 12.4-mile tunnel in Maryland next month
• A robot can print this $64,000 house in as few as 8 hours — take a look inside
• David Attenborough Warns: Sixth Mass Extinction Is Imminent
• China Blocks Foreign Companies from Mapping Its Roads for Self-Driving Cars
• ‘World’s First’ Solar-Powered train to begin operation in Australia
• Japan’s Yamato plans automated facility to beat labour shortage
• JWT 2018 :The Future 100

• The U.S. suit against AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner likely won’t end until after May
• 2017 was the year digital ad spending finally beat TV…“…Digital ad spending reached $209 billion worldwide — 41 percent of the market — in 2017, while TV brought in $178 billion — 35 percent of the market — in 2017. That’s according to Magna, the research arm of media buying firm IPG Mediabrands…”
• Sony has sold over 70 million PS4 consoles, 2 million VR headsets
• Compass gets $450M from SoftBank; real estate portal now valued at $2.2B
• Google’s mobile search results now include videos of celebs answering your questions
• Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 focuses on AI, VR and battery life
• G.E. Cuts Jobs as It Navigates a Shifting Energy Market
• The Hidden Player Spurring a Wave of Cheap Consumer Devices: Amazon
• When AI is made by AI, results are impressive
• a16z next 10 years
• YouTube to Launch New Music Subscription Service in March
• Google and Facebook dominate digital advertising — and they now account for 25% of all ad sales, online or off
• Amazon has opened a new research facility in the British university city of Cambridge with a wall made almost entirely out of Amazon Echo devices…The new “development centre” will be home to about 400 engineers who will work on Amazon’s Alexa assistant and drone innovation…
• Dropbox’s CEO credits his success to a habit he’s passed on to his executive team
• Amazon may be getting ready to go on a digital media buying spree
• DeepMind AI needs mere 4 hours of self-training to become a chess overlord…AlphaGo Zero needed three days to train up in Go; AlphaZero needed just eight hours.
• Japan eyes startup visa program to lure foreign businesses
• Walmex expands Wi-Fi in Mexican stores, pushing online shopping

• Amazon Plans to Send Alexa to the Office
• Netflix’s ‘Skip Intro’ Button Makes TV Ever More Like an App
• Microsoft is bringing clever tabs to every Windows 10 app
• Hulu’s new UI and live TV service are now on Samsung’s 2017 smart TVs
• Amazon will let Alexa developers use voice recognition to personalize apps
• Google’s AI knows when a stranger is looking at your phone
• AWS launches GuardDuty, its new intelligent threat detection service
• Airbnb launches payment splitting for group trips
• Google is officially 100% sun and wind powered – 3.0 gigawatts worth
• Verizon says it will have 5G service in five cities by the end of next year
• aws re:invent product announcements
• Google is making a computer vision kit for Raspberry P
• Google May Reunite With Nest as It Takes on Amazon
• Ginkgo Bioworks, ‘the organism company,’ is now worth over $1 billion
• SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy launch will now take place in 2018
• AT&T’s LTE-M Button is basically a programmable 4G Amazon Dash Button for businesses
• Volvo’s car subscription service sounds like good way to get the new XC40
• Amazon’s AWS Cloud9 IDE lets you write, test, and debug code in your browser
• Google Assistant can now locate a handyman near you

AWS re:Invent

• QZ What I learned from Jeff Bezos after reading every Amazon shareholder letter
• Apple’s new ad is a clever comeback to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s iPad putdown
• The Department of Justice is using AT&T’s own argument for buying Time Warner to try to stop the deal
• Infographic from Recode: Complex web of self-driving and ride-sharing relationships
• Tesla’s new supercar will cost at least $200,000
• Tesla’s electric Semi truck starts at $150,000, reservations now live
• Two years after going public, Square is now worth more than Twitter
• A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm
• As Chip Makers Consolidate, Marvell Will Buy Cavium in $6 Billion Deal
• VPN provider TunnelBear expands into password management with RememBear app
• Amazon unveils AI consulting program for cloud customers
  “…Called the Amazon ML Solutions Lab, the program will provide customers with access to machine learning experts from Amazon who can help them tackle business problems using purpose-built intelligent models…”
• HBR: How the Most Successful Teams Bridge the Strategy-Execution Gap
• Google Lens will soon get top-tier placement in the Google Assistant app
• BMW Joins Race to Secure Cobalt for Electric-Vehicle Batteries
• Why experiments are critical to your digital transformation
• Facebook introduces a Messenger plugin for business websites
• Twitter is testing Bookmarks, a feature to privately flag Tweets for later
• Tencent Just Overtook Facebook in Market Value: Chart
• China’s Tencent takes 12 percent stake in Snap as shares plunge
• Amazon seeks staff in European insurance push
• Toutiao, a Chinese news app that’s making headlines.“…Its 120m daily readers spend an average of 74 minutes a day on the app…”
• The Hidden Forces Behind Toutiao: China’s Content King

• • Eric Ries was in London at Cass Business School for talking about his new book. You can watch his inspiring talk from this periscope link. His new book is “The Startup Way” about entrepreneurial management transforms culture and drives growth. Below is the visualisation by Alli McKee. 

• Meet Boston Dynamics’ electric powered SpotMini
• Amazon is making a ‘Lord of the Rings’ prequel series
• Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sale amassed $25.3 billion, doubling 2016 Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales combined…a 40 percent jump from last year’s figures…
• Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot is a parkour master

• Tesla’s big new all-electric truck – the Tesla Semi…The Tesla Semi will go 0 to 60 mph in just 5 seconds, which is incredibly fast compared to a diesel truck…”… the truck that will do everything in its power to avoid a jackknifing incident, automatically, without requiring any driver intervention. And, it’ll do it regardless of what trailer or load is attached to the back. “Jackknifing is impossible,” said Elon Musk on stage at the Tesla Semi unveiling…”
• Hours before launch, EA strips micro-transactions from ‘Star Wars: Battlefront II’
• Google’s chatbot analytics platform Chatbase launches to public
• Comcast wants to buy Fox’s international, but it’ll have to wait for AT&T-Time Warner approval first
• Philo streams pay TV — without sports or broadcast channels — for $16 a month
• Facebook will live stream 47 college basketball games for free this season
• Williams-Sonoma is buying a 3-D imaging and augmented reality startup for $112 million
• Musical.ly, the lip-syncing video app, is going to sell for at least $800 million
• The UK Government is investing an extra £21 million in Tech City UK
• A breakdown of iPhone manufacturing costs over time
• Amazon rolls out Alexa, Echo in Canada
• Amazon is transforming Whole Foods into a tech store
• Alexa integration with Kimpton Hotel (Source: Twitter)
• This easy hack lets you create a virtual ‘Home’ button on the iPhone X
• Google Maps adds color to help you hone in on points of interest
• Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time
• MariaDB coming to Azure, as Microsoft joins the MariaDB Foundation
• Apple plans to add a 3D sensor to the back of the iPhone, too
• Amazon Music app for Android quietly gets Chromecast support

 

• China’s Tencent bought 12 percent of Snap — and everything else we learned from Snap’s earnings report
• Uber is asking drivers if they want to provide other on-demand services
• Razer to raise upwards of $504 million in Hong Kong IPO
• 70 years of VC innovation
• New Stars Wars and Marvel TV shows planned for Disney’s streaming service
• Project Loon delivers internet to 100,000 people in Puerto Rico
• UPS is converting ‘up to 1,500 delivery trucks’ to battery-electric in New York
• A hospital without patients
• Logitech to shut down “service and support” for Harmony Link devices in 2018
• ‘Stranger Things’ is a real hit: 16 million Americans watched  Season Two premiere, according to Nielsen
• Spotify has brought in a new head of PR as it gets ready for a 2018 IPO
• Selling a House to Millennials?
• Disney Fleshes Out Its Streaming Plans
• Skyscanner acquired London social media startup Twizoo
• The 3.8 billion hours of content streamed on Roku’s platform in the third quarter equates to 2.5 hours of daily watch time per user.
• US smartphone shipments dip in Q3
• Disney tried to hide the Millennium Falcon with shipping containers — but it’s on Google Maps
• Amazon brings the Echo to Japan

 

• Broadcom plans $100bn unsolicited bid for Qualcomm
• iOS 11 vs iOS 10: Comparison Review in UI and Interaction
• iPhone X order status: Apple is predicting a record holiday quarter…Apple says to expect record sales, between $84 billion and $87 billion…helped its market cap briefly hit $900 billion…
• YouTube Kids update gives kids their own profiles, expands controls
• Pandora made $80M in U.S. app store revenue in Q3, booting Netflix from the top grossing spot
• How the top four cloud companies fared in Q3
• Humans Are Still Better Than AI at StarCraft—for Now…A StarCraft gamer won 4-0 in the world’s first contest between AI systems and professional human players.
• Generation Z is creating a $5 billion market for fake meat and seafood
• Applying blockchain technology to online reviews
• The space industry will be worth nearly $3 trillion in 30 years, Bank of America predicts
• Facebook’s revenue per user topped $5 for the first time
• BMW Says Its 2021 i Flagship Will Be Level 5 Autonomous

• A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. John le Carré
• HBR: 3D Printing Gives Hackers Entirely New Ways to Wreak Havoc
• HBR: Selling Products Is Good. Selling Projects Can Be Even Better
• Amazon will start delivering packages into the homes of Prime members. The program is called Amazon Key.
• …Amazon will own the bigger piece of e-commerce sales this year owning about 44 cents out of every e-commerce dollar spent in the U.S., up from 38 cents the previous year, according to new estimates from public companies from research firm eMarketer…
• Hulu’s CEO is going to run Sony TV, and another Fox exec is going to run Hulu
• Delphi is one of the first automotive suppliers to acquire a self-driving software startup. Delphi has bought nuTonomy for $450 million.
• …The average price for a smartphone in North America rose 4 percent to over $400 in the third quarter of 2017 compared with a year earlier. In China, it rose 15 percent to $327 in that same time…
• Square is expanding its lending business through partners to try to reach millions of more small businesses. Merchants using delivery service Caviar will also be eligible for Square Capital loans.
• Most Netflix customers don’t pay for other streaming services. But Hulu and HBO Now subscribers do.
• Microsoft finally kills off the Kinect, but the tech will live on in other devices
• Apple lowers Face ID specifications to ramp up iPhone X production, report says
• Amazon debuts Cloud Cam and Key to take on Nest, August and others in home security
• Apple purchased a company with technology that would allow an iPhone to charge without being plugged in
• Apple drives native AI adoption in smartphones
• Russia will Require Cryptocurrency Miners to Register With the Government in 2018
• Daimler unveils heavy-duty all-electric truck concept with ‘up to 220 miles’ range
• Singapore aims to be 25% solar-powered by 2025
• Balloon navigation breakthrough helps extend cell service in Puerto Rico
• LinkedIn plans to teach all its engineers the basics of using AI
• Amazon rolls out cash payments in Mexico
• A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.
• Saudis Are Talking to Amazon, Alibaba Over New City, Prince Says…in talks with some of the world’s biggest companies to develop technologies that will power life in the $500 billion city he’s planning to build on the Red Sea.

• Lyft Raises $1 Billion in Round Led by Alphabet’s CapitalG
• Nokia partners with AWS on cloud migration, 5G and IoT strategies
• When $100BN is not enough… Softbank is planning Vision Fund sequels…SoftBank could commit as much as $880 billion to tech investments in the coming years
• LG, Qualcomm 5G & autonomous car partnership boosts share prices
• Garmin’s Speak puts Alexa-powered navigation in your car
• TV producers can now see how many people are watching Netflix shows
• PayPal’s quarter exceeded expectations across the board
• Microsoft’s Market Value Hits a Dot-Com Era Milestone: $600 Billion
• Facebook to Test News-Subscription Sign-Up…The program will begin on Android devices only with publishers including Washington Post, the Economist
• Verizon’s streaming TV service reportedly delayed until spring 2018 at the earliest
• Blue Origin fires up its next big rocket engine for the first time
• August Home, one of the buzziest names in smart locks, has been acquired by Assa Abloy, the world’s biggest lock maker and the owner of a multitude of lock brands, including Yale.
• New neural network teaches itself Go
• Google Calendar for Web gets its first redesign since 2011
• YouTube UK Ads Leaderboard: September 2017