#Weekly220

  • An executive’s guide to software development (McKinsey)  “…In his 2013 message to GE shareholders, CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt wrote, “We believe that every industrial company will become a software company.”
  • Product managers for the digital world (McKinsey)
  • An operating model for company-wide agile development (McKinsey)
  • Wall Street to CEOs: The Future Is Now
    “…Ford Motor Co.’s  recent decision to boot then-Chief Executive Mark Fields, a 28-year veteran of the company, exemplified a shift in the priorities of big companies across the U.S. The message is simple: In an age of rapid disruption by the software and tech industries, a leader have to pick up the tempo and make riskier bets sooner… or else…”
  • European Digital Wallet Landscape
  • Google’s New Feature Can Match Ad Clicks With In-Store Purchases
  • South Korea has the highest concentration of robots in the world

  • Drones transform working lives. Unmanned aircraft are employed in professions from archaeology to farming
  •  Elon Musk’s Boring Company releases new images of its electric vehicle concept for passengers
  • A Chinese company is offering free training for US coal miners to become wind farmers
  • NASA just released the first inside-look of Jupiter’s rings

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson introduces his latest book, “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.”

From Twitter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#219

  • You can contact with me for custom reports/presentations.
  • Google I/O 2017: Everything important that Google announced
  • Uber’s Future May Rely on Predicting How Much You’re Willing to Pay
  • Building for Billions (Google Developer Site)
  • Key Statistics
    • 2  billion active Android devices
    • 500 million active Google Photos users
    • 1.2 billion videos and photos uploaded to Google Photos every day.
    • Users navigate more than 1 billion kilometers per day with Google Maps.
    • Google Drive has 800 million users.
    • People watch 1 billion hours of YouTube videos a day.
    • Google’s speech recognition technology now has a 4.9% word error rate
  • 20 Questions With Google’s Assistant and Apple’s Siri
  • Uber Freight : Uber for trucks is here… matching commercial shippers with truck drivers looking for a job. Freight rides can be booked several weeks in advance or on the same day. Ad Video
  • Amazon is now worth two Walmarts ( $459 billion vs Walmart’s? $228 billion)
  • 10 home batteries that rival Tesla’s Powerwall 2
  • Nike made an interactive track that lets you race an LED ghost of yourself
  • Norway to build first self-sailing electric cargo ship...Initially the ship will be manned, but remote operation is expected to begin in 2019 and fully autonomous operation in 2020, the companies said
  • HBR : Drones go to work
  • The future of robots and Artificial Intelligence is being led by these 8 companies
  • Google is training computers to predict when you might get sick
  • HPE unveils ‘world’s largest’ single memory computer (160TB of memory)
  • Google will make 1,000 Cloud TPUs (44 petaFLops) available at no cost to ML developers
  • Spacex closer to goal of launching every two weeks
  • Eric Schmidt Stanford Graduate School of Business
  • Medium is recording audio versions of its top stories
  • Musical.ly Talking With Viacom, NBC for Original Shows
  • Amazon Sets Sights on U.K. Grocery With Checkout-Free Trademark

 

Weekly#218

  • You can contact with me for custom reports/presentations.
  • Nvidia CEO: Software Is Eating the World, but AI Is Going to Eat Software
  • Battle to Provide Chips for the AI Boom Heats Up
  • Softbank leads $500 million investment into UK virtual reality start-up
    “… Improbable was founded just five years ago by two Cambridge University computer science graduates in order to create large-scale virtual worlds and simulations. ‘Simulation on a massive scale’…”
  • SoftBank Nears Closing on $100 Billion Tech Fund
  • Apple’s Latest Record: An $800 Billion Market Cap
  • “…But Snapchat can still say it has a unique offering, according to App Annie. The app data firm measured user behavior during the fourth quarter and said that on an average day, 35 percent of Snapchat’s daily users in the U.S. aren’t reachable on Facebook that same day, and 46 percent can’t be found on Instagram. About 61 percent of Snapchat’s fans aren’t watching YouTube on a given day, either. Snap said it had 60 million daily active users in the fourth quarter in the U.S. and Canada…”
  • Visual Studio for Mac
  • Officially, it’s so Linux admin scripts can run on Windows.
  • Google’s “Project Treble” solves one of Android’s many update roadblocks“…This is not a magic bullet that will solve all of Android’s update problems, however. After an update is released, Google lists three steps to creating an Android update:

    1) Silicon manufacturers (Qualcomm, Samsung Exynos, etc) “modify the new release for their specific hardware” and do things like make sure drivers and power management will still work.
    2) OEMs (Samsung, LG, HTC) step in and “modify the new release again as needed for their devices.” This means making sure all the hardware works, rebranding Android with a custom skin, adding OEM apps, and modifying core parts of the Android OS to add special features like (before 7.0) multi-window support.
    3) Carriers add more apps, more branding, and “test and certify the new release...”

  • Ransomware attack appears to be targeting institutions in several European countries.
  • 15-second ads coming to Amazon’s Alexa
  • Apple invests $200m in iPhone glassmaker Corning (Supplier is first beneficiary of $1bn fund to promote US manufacturing jobs)
  • Newly Developed ‘Bionic Skin’ Enables the Sense of Touch in Robots
  • Newly Developed Method Makes Printing Glass Objects in 3-D a Reality
  • “Artificial blowhole”generates electricity from ocean waves
  • Sweden GDP vs. what China spent on eating out in 2016
  • Simple math is why Elon Musk’s companies keep doing what others don’t even consider possible

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQqxCeHhmeU

Weekly#217

  • You can contact with me for custom reports/presentations.
  • Facebook beats in Q1 with $8.03B revenue, faster growth to 1.94B users
  • Facebook holds 16% of the global digital-ad market, behind Google’s 33% share, says forecasting firm eMarketer.
  • WhatsApp’s ‘Status’ Snapchat clone hits 175M daily users in 10 weeks (15 percent of the messaging app’s 1.2 billion users.)
  • Fitbit stock jumps 10% after beating in Q1 with 3 million devices sold
  • Verizon sells its private cloud and managed hosting businesses to IBM
  • There are 147 teams competing in XPrize’s broad-ranging AI competition
  • InVision picks up TrackDuck to better integrate with Atlassian products.This is InVision’s seventh acquisition in the last 16 months.
  • Apple’s services business grows 18% (quarter’s revenue from services was $7.04 billion)
  • Facebook Messenger rolls out Instant Games worldwide
  • SpaceX plans to launch first internet-providing satellites in 2019
  • A space engine that could make flying into orbit commonplace
  • Self-Driving EVs Will Mean 200 Million Fewer Cars in U.S. by 2030, Study Claims
  • New device can harvest indoor light to power electronics
  • Walmart has applied for a patent to track how much toothpaste and milk you use at home
  • Google is testing a job-search feature that could rival LinkedIn—and Facebook
  • Amazon Echo touchscreen device shown for the first time in new leak
  • Citi lists Netflix, Tesla as potential takeover targets for Apple (Netflix (NFLX.O), Walt Disney (DIS.N), Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), Activision Blizzard (ATVI.O), Electronic Arts (EA.O) Take Two Interactive Software (TTWO.O) and Hulu)
  • Europe’s aviation safety authorities have proposed rules for operating small drones that include requirements for geo-fencing technology to prevent them from straying into banned areas and a “dos and don’ts” leaflet to be inserted in retail packaging.
  • Amazon plans to open a new center in the university city of Cambridge for scientists developing technologies including the Alexa digital assistant used in its Echo speakers. Able to house more than 400 scientists and engineers when it opens in the autumn

 

Weekly#216

  • You can contact with me for custom reports/presentations
  • Almost two weeks after Apple Inc. secured permission to test its autonomous-car technology in California, the first images of the vehicle have been captured on Silicon Valley roads…California has so far granted autonomous car testing permits to 30 companies, a mix of tech players, startups, carmakers and automotive suppliers…
  • …Netflix Inc. recommends a minimum connection speed of at least 5 megabits a second to watch basic HD video, while Amazon recommends at least 3.5 megabits….
  • Google’s parent company Alphabet on Thursday reported $24.8 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2017, a 22 percent jump from the same period last year..
    …Google added 1,939 workers in the quarter, the vast majority of them product managers and engineers, with hiring growth concentrated in the company’s cloud services
  • Amazon Web Services Annual Run Rate  $14.6 billion
  • Microsoft Intelligent Cloud (including Azure) Annual Run Rate $6.8 billion.
  • According to Synergy Research Group, AWS controlled 40 percent of the public cloud services market as of early February, compared to 23 percent for Microsoft, IBM and Google combined.
  • Elon Musk’s giant tunnel boring machine arrived at SpaceX – first pictures
  • Google Is Becoming “A.I. First
  • Is This Tiny European Nation a Preview of Our Tech Future?
  • Tesla starting its roll out a new Automatic Emergency Breaking (AEB) feature to its Autopilot 2.0 hardware as reported yesterday by Electrek. AEB, developed from scratch, will raise the safety standards of its cars.
  • Cryogenically frozen brains will be ‘woken up’ and transplanted in donor bodies within three years, claims surgeon. Professor Sergio Canavero, Director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, is aiming to carry out the first human head transplant within 10 months and then wants to begin trials on brain transplants.
  • 5 Crazy Things Brain Interfaces Might Make Possible
    • Control Your Computer with Your Mind
    • True Next-Gen Gaming
    • Truly Emotionally Aware Technology
    • Don’t Control a Robot Arm. Have a Robot Arm
    • Control Your Own (or Someone Else’s) Brain
  • E-bikes are becoming a hit with consumers “Our business in the past five years has gone from e-bikes being 10 percent of what we sell to now closer to 90 percent“
  • Dubai has quickly grown into a global hub for trade. Now, it’s planning to use blockchain as the basis for its economy, further enhancing this status.
  • 5 infographics that explain one year of blockchain news
  • Amazon unveils logistics services revenues for first time ($6.438bn in sales in the quarter, which is more than one in six dollars of total revenues)
  • A recent study by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated there are at least 80m Prime members in the US, and millions more overseas.
  • Meet the People Who Train the Robots (to Do Their Own Jobs)

Weekly#215

  • The Next Big Blue-Collar Job Is Coding
  • Google Home can now recognize different users by their voice
  • BCG estimates that by 2050, the industrial drone fleet in Europe and the US will comprise more than 1 million units and generate $50 billion per year in product and service revenues.
  • Musk,CEO of Neuralink and wants to have its cybernetic implant devices on the market in 2020. Within 10 years he wants people to be able to communicate telepathically.
  • Facebook Finally Released Details on Their Top Secret Brain-Computer Interface
  • Mastercard is building fingerprint scanners directly into their cards
  • Baidu to Open Source Its Self-Driving Technology (“…Open sourcing Baidu’s capabilities in functions such as route planning, vehicle control and operating systems will help Baidu and the autonomous-vehicle industry develop more rapidly, Baidu group President Qi Lu said in an interview…”)
  • The US wind industry now employs more than 100,000 people
  • Video: Regina Dugan’s Keynote at Facebook F8 2017
  • Video: Facebook F8 Keynote
  • Today will be the first day the UK was powered without coal since the industrial revolution
  • Tesla’s iOS and Android apps were updated to give owners of the company’s Powerwall home energy storage product access to information about their in-home electricity grid.
  • Renewables provided 55 percent of all new electrical capacity worldwide last year, the most ever.
  • Rick and Morty in VR
  • Amazon May Be Using a Hyperloop to Deliver Same-Day Shipping
  • “..every person in US generates demand for ~60 tons of freight each year“

Weekly#214

  • Connecting Global FinTech: Interim Hub Review 2017: Deloitte
  • Amazon opens Echo hardware reference design to outside hardware developers
  • GM to Build Facility for Self-Driving Cars with 1000 Employees in SF
  • Denver-based startup Bext Holdings Inc. (Bext360) is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology to make it easier for coffee farmers around the world to get paid a fair price for the coffee beans they grow and sell.
  • Google Home can now track flight prices
  • Tesla will unveil its electric semi truck in September
  • a mobile device able to diagnose 13 health conditions while continuously monitoring five vital signs.
  • Google’s AI has learned how to draw by looking at your doodles
  • Cassini finds molecular hydrogen in the Enceladus plume: Evidence for hydrothermal processes
  • Tiny bursts of electrical stimulation could help users feel walls and spaces in VR
  • How Germany’s Otto uses artificial intelligence and machine learning: Its conventional data analysis showed that customers were less likely to return merchandise if it arrived within two day (The firm is using an algorithm designed for the CERN laboratory)
  • With AI, Answers Are Cheap, But Questions Are The Future
  • Apple gets permit to test autonomous cars in California
  • Google’s parental control software Family Link hits iOS
  • Let’s Watch It! allows friends to watch & react to videos together on iMessage
  • Baidu is acquiring xPerception, a U.S. startup specialized in computer vision, the startup has its own module for object recognition and depth perception that can be deployed on robots and drones.
  • Crowdfunding platforms take a data-driven approach to state political campaigns (“When we make projections about how competitive a race will be, we can look back and see if we were correct. We can see how much it costs to flip a race”)
  • Facebook’s F8 plans include Camera Effects Platform, offline Instagram

 

 Star Wars: The Last Jedi Official Teaser 

 

Weekly#213

  • Main booster accounted for 80 per cent of the cost of  rockets (SpaceX)
  • Jeff Bezos says lower launch costs will eventually ‘open the gateway’ for space entrepreneurs
  • Jeff Bezos Says He Is Selling $1 Billion a Year in Amazon Stock to Finance Race to Space
  • Uber’s open source data visualization tool now goes beyond maps
  • On credit-scoring’s leading edge, financial-technology upstarts use artificial intelligence to analyze swells of unconventional data (1200 data points)
  • Deep sleep may act as fountain of youth in old age
  • a team of scientists at University of Manchester have developed a solution for efficiently turning salty seawater into potable H2O.
  • How Self-Driving Cars Will Change Local Real Estate
  • Tesla is now worth more than Ford after delivering a record number of cars for the quarter
  • It’s getting harder and harder to tell Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter apart
  • Utah becomes the first Power Five school to give scholarships to video gamers
  • Lyft raises $500M round as Uber struggles
  • Skype will now translate Japanese for you in real-time
  • Netflix’s TV apps now have a screensaver to highlight original content
  • Cortana will now help you set up a new Windows 10 PC with your voice
  • People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. Alan Kay (Twitter Source :  https://twitter.com/SuB8u)
    • Building an AI Chip Saved Google From Building a Dozen New Data Centers
    • Apple’s Making Its Own GPU to Control Its Own Destiny

Weekly#212

  • SpaceX Lofts Commercial Satellite With Reused Rocket In Historic Flight
  • Lyft is turning cabs into fixed-route shuttles in its latest experiment
  • Australia lays claim to the biggest solar farm in the world. (The solar farm will consist of 3.4 million solar panels and 1.1 million batteries which will be able to produce 330 MW (1 MW can power up to 1,000 homes) and store up to 100 MW.)
  • The forthcoming video service, to be called go90, was a quarter-billion-dollar bet that Verizon could evolve from a staid telecommunications company into a hip, Netflix-like digital native — and everybody wanted a piece of the shiny new toy
  • Apple’s $5 billion campus opens next month
  • A team of Wall Street analysts think Amazon will be worth $910 billion by 2027 (Projection : AWS 76 B USD, Prime 450 mio subs. (100 mio subs currently)
  • Silicon Valley: Season 4 Trailer (HBO)
  • Facebook will reveal at its F8 conference a new class of group bots that work inside Messenger group chats. These group bots can keep users informed about real-time news such as a sports game’s progress, e-commerce deliveries and more
  • Automated Robots Building Large Scale Renewable Energy Power Plants Likely Within the Next 30 Years
  • Robots will be the next big utility, like electricity, expert Martin Ford says
  • Why the United Arab Emirates Is Building a Space Program From Scratch
  • WeChat 889 mio users
  • Disney researchers have developed innovative technology that will allow people to charge their devices in a truly wireless fashion
  • Ford Hires 400 BlackBerry Engineers  to Work on Connected Cars
  • Canadian government said it would dedicate US$94 million in funding toward developing AI in Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton—cities with top universities.
  • Amazon quietly launches its own social media influencer program into beta
  • Square Boosts Global Payments Ambitions With U.K. Expansion
  • Baidu’s AI group has grown to roughly 1,300 people, which includes the 300-person Baidu Research
  • These AI bots created their own language to talk to each other
  • Elon Musk launches Neuralink, a venture to merge the human brain with AI
  • How AI and blockchain will change business organization