Weekly#142

  • 100 Notable Books of 2015 (nytimes)
  • Powerwall competitors in Germany. SMA Solar, Daimler Accumotive, Solarwatt (Reuters)
  • Bill Gates will launch a multi-billion-dollar clean energy research and development initiative on Monday (Reuters)
  • LG Display to invest $8.7 billion in new OLED plant (Reuters)
  • Sony’s PlayStation 4 sales top 30 million consoles (Reuters)
  • Samsung starts mass production of industry’s first 128-GB DRAM
  • Amazon Challenger Jet.com Announces $350 Million Investment (Bloomberg)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#141

  • Alphabet Inc.’s Google unveiled technology Wednesday that lets users search inside and use mobile apps without downloading them, its latest effort to extend its search-and-advertising machine on smartphones. (WSJ)
  • Fleets of incredibly large wind turbines could produce a third of all UK power by 2030 (QZ)
  • Sony Considers Making PS2 Games Playable on PS4 (WSJ)
  • Sprint to Get Cash Infusion With Deal to Sell and Lease Back Devices (WSJ)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#140

  • Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft said artificial intelligence will be crucial for the coming age in which speaking and texting will be “the new U.I.” for software. (WSJ)
  • Companies including Gap Inc., Starbucks Corp and Target Corp.have come under fire for turning workers’ lives upside down with unpredictable hours set by automated scheduling software. Now one of the largest vendors of such software aims to profit from a different approach: prioritizing employee satisfaction. (WSJ)
  • What do Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving cars and old folks have in common? They both get pulled over for driving too slowly. (WSJ)
  • Watchmaker Fossil Group Inc. has agreed to acquire startup Misfit Inc., a maker of wearable fitness trackers, for $260 million. (WSJ)
  • iPad Pro review: Mac-like speed with all the virtues and restrictions of iOS (ArsTechnica)
  • The direction of computing is only going in one way—to the cloud, just 16 years after it first formed.(ArsTechnica)
  • Microsoft Invented Google Earth in the 90s Then Totally Blew It (Motherboard)
  • Visa is exploring using the blockchain to power money transfers (VentureBeat)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#139

  • “If AWS were to grow at a 40%-45% clip near term and decelerate to 30% in the out years, and Amazon’s retail business was to grow gross profits by 15% over the longer-term, AWS would indeed be larger than Amazon retail (on a gross profit basis) in the year 2024,” said Keirstead and Sandler. (Business Insider) (Twitter link)
  • Qualcomm’s China Struggles Continue as It Fails to Reach Patent Deals (WSJ)
  • Satellite pictures of a remote and treeless northern steppe reveal colossal earthworks — geometric figures of squares, crosses, lines and rings the size of several football fields, recognizable only from the air and the oldest estimated at 8,000 years old. (Nytimes)
  • Nintendo on Friday is launching a popular Japanese videogame in North America, the next chapter for a franchise that has raked in more than $2 billion in sales of games, toys and more. (WSJ)
  • Researchers at Florida State University have developed a new artificial material that functions similar to the process of photosynthesis and can open up new avenues to create a sustainable energy source.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#138

  • Apple Inc. said Tuesday that quarterly profit rose 31% on demand for the iPhone, …
    the company said it sold 48.04 million iPhones, …
    Revenue rose  to $51.50 billion…
    The iPhone continues to do well in China, where it has become a premium brand akin to Prada bags or Rolex watches. (WSJ)
  • The social network on Tuesday launched “2G Tuesdays” to let its staffers experience the social network as if on a 2G connection. The idea is to simulate the experience of Facebook users in regions with sluggish networks – a major area of growth for Facebook – who might use the site differently. (WSJ)
  • The Weather Company Is in Talks With IBM About Sale of Digital Assets (Recode)
    related 2013 WSJ Article Weather Channel Now Also Forecasts What You’ll Buy (WSJ)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#137

  • WSJD Conference Videos
  • Why Attitude Is More Important Than IQ (Pulse)
  • Amazon Web Services cloud-computing unit, which rents out computing power to other companies, reported a 79% sales increase to $2.09 billion. (WSJ)
  • Microsoft’s combined cloud businesses are running at an annual revenue rate of $8.2 billion and are on track to hit a $20 billion target. (WSJ)
  • Microsoft Edge won’t get Chrome-like extensions until 2016 (ArsTechnica)
  • Android compatibility document mentions forthcoming car infotainment OS (ArsTechnica)
  • Amazon acquired Kiva Robots $775 mio USD in 2012 to automate the
    whole picking and packing process at large warehouses.  Amazon began using Kiva robots only last year, and by the end of 2014, said it had 15,000 bots working across 10 of its warehouses. At the end of Q3, 30,000 bots at 13 warehouses. (Business Insider)
  • 3 people have crossed the US in an Autopilot Tesla — in 58 hours – 2,995 miles across the US, from Redondo Beach in California to New York City.(Business Insider)
  • Apple is planning a big design change for its next iPhone that could include removing the home button, analyst says (Business Insider)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#136

  • Ex-CEO Steve Ballmer has 4% stake in Twitter (FastCompany)
  • French Studio created a mobile game only in binaural sound without graphics (FastCompany) (Ulule)
  • Stanford University’s endowment fund and Willett Advisors LLC, the fund managing Michael Bloomberg’s investments, now invest a combined $100,000 in every startup to go through YC (WSJ)
  • Alibaba bets big on video with $4.2B proposed acquisition of Youku (Tech in Asia)
  • System that replaces human intuition with algorithms outperforms human teams (Phys)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#135

  • Is Your Startup Idea Already Taken? (Buzzfeed)
  • Recode Modile Conf (Videos)
  • What Has Us Interested at Homebrew… (link)
  • Apple Mac Sales Slow to Lowest Rate in Two Years: Analysts (WSJ)
  • This summer, world-wide Google searches on mobile devices surpassed those on personal computers for the first time, Amit Singhal, head of search at Google parent Alphabet Inc.GOOGL +0.64%, said at the Recode Mobile conference on Thursday. Those figures exclude searches done on tablet computers, he said (WSJ)
  • Amazon.com Inc. introduced a new service for its fast-growing Amazon Web Services division for what’s known as the Internet of Things, or IoT.The service is designed to allow developers to link Internet-connected hardware devices to communicate with other devices as well as applications stored in remote servers. That means devices such as smoke alarms or fitness trackers can communicate with one another, store data or take commands from computers without the help of a live person.(WSJ)
  • Facebook Inc is expanding its emotional range. The social-networking company said it is finally letting users do more than “like” what they see in their news feed, a move that businesses may favor with a thumbs up. (WSJ)
  • Shopping Site Jet.com Abandons $50 Membership Fee
    Move is surprising turnabout for what many viewed as most promising challenge to Amazon.com in years (WSJ)
  • How Do You Tell an ‘Achievement Beard’ From a Loser Beard? (Nymag)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#134

Capture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#133

  • Internet from Space
    • Elon Musk
      Each of Musk’s satellites weighs around 113kg, less than half the mass of standard satellites, which orbit at a 35,000km height. The new satellites will be launched into low Earth orbit, which is only 750km from the surface of the earth. That will improve latency, a major challenge with existing satellite internet: from low Earth orbit, latency is predicted to be around 30ms, compared to the typical 500ms latency experienced by existing satellite internet customers…
      …Micro-satellites also cost less: $350,000 to build and launch, as opposed to the tens of millions of dollars of larger ones (link)
    • Virgin
      The broadband space race has received a $500m boost after Airbus, Coca-Cola and Virgin Group joined other funders in backing a venture to bring the internet to the most remote corners of the planet.OneWeb, based in the channel island of Jersey but with offices in California and Washington DC, plans to send 648 micro-satellites into space by 2019. These will do away with the expense of installing mobile phone masts or laying miles of cables, instead beaming a broadband signal direct to small, solar-powered user terminals on the ground. (link)
    • Samsung
      A paper published by Farooq Khan, president of Samsung Research America in Dallas, details an interconnected net of 4,600 low-orbit satellites that could bring each of the world’s 5 billion people 200 gigabytes of internet per month. Samsung expects global internet traffic to reach one zettabyte per month by 2028. (link)
  • Google’s search business might not be as water-tight as people think it is
    (Business Insider)
    gwi search data
  • Apple’s Car: If True, ‘One of the Most Important Moments in Transportation,’ Says Morgan Stanley (Barrons)…The addressable market for mobility is on the order of $10 trillion (10 trillion vehicle miles x $1/mile), more than 13% of global GDP. This figure ignores the value of the time of the driver, infrastructure, social and environmental costs……Apple might have ideas on the “non-productive” time that you spend behind the wheel — a collective 400 billion hours annually by all drivers: “What is the value of 400 billion hours a year? How much value could Apple create from this time or said another way how much are consumers willing to pay to recoup this time? It’s time to start thinking about… time.”
  • The Entrant’s Guide to The Automobile Industry (asymco)
  • The steady forward march of Facebook Inc.’s many messaging apps continues. Instagram now has 400 million monthly active users (WSJ)