Weekly#132

  • Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users.
    Part of the trick is that the company builds its service using a programming language called Erlang. Though not all that popular across the wider coding community, Erlang is particularly well suited to juggling communications from a huge number of users, and it lets engineers deploy new code on the fly. But Mahdavi says that the trick is as much about attitude as technology..
    But that’s the point. “The number-one lesson is just be very focused on what you need to do,” he said. “Doing spend time getting distracted by other activities, other technologies, even things in the office, like meetings.”At WhatsApp, employees almost never attend a meeting. Yes, there are only a few dozen of them. But that too is the point.(Wired)
  • Google’s Rachel Potvin came pretty close to an answer Monday at an engineering conference in Silicon Valley. She estimates that the software needed to run all of Google’s Internet services—from Google Search to Gmail to Google Maps—spans some 2 billion lines of code. By comparison, Microsoft’s Windows operating system—one of the most complex software tools ever built for a single computer, a project under development since the 1980s—is likely in the realm of 50 million lines…
    The flip side is that building and running a 2-billion-line monolith is no simple task.(Wired) (Tweet source)
  • German Car-Parts Makers See Bigger Role in Technology
    Bosch GmbH, Continental AG and ZF Friedrichshafen AG, which are expanding into mega-suppliers able to leverage new technologies for all parts of a vehicle, have started working closely with the U.S. technology giants. (WSJ)
  • Google has hired Detroit veteran John Krafcik to run its self-driving car division, sending a message that it is serious about the commercial viability of the autonomous vehicles business. (WSJ)
  • The iPhone 6S could set a sales record for Apple — in large part because it was made available in China from Day One.The company announced Monday that online orders of the iPhone 6S, including the bigger-screened Plus variety, are on pace to exceed 10 million over the new two weeks, set to surpass the record first-few-weeks sales mark the iPhone 6 hit a year ago. The iPhone 6 wasn’t available in China for about the first month. (LA Times)
  • Clone wars: First Lenovo, now Dell is working on a Surface competitor (ZDNET)
  • Developer Daniel Pasco explained in a blog post that Apple’s upcoming tvOS — which will power the new Apple TV — doesn’t support webviews, which means apps for the device won’t be able to display Web content.This makes it a lot harder for developers to build in features like browsing websites, opening links from apps like Twitter or RSS readers, or displaying frequently updated information, such as sports scores. (the next web)
  • Paralyzed man becomes first person to “feel” sensations through a prosthetic hand connected to his brain (Boing Boing) (Image Source : http://www.darpa.mil/program/revolutionizing-prosthetics)
    Revolutionizing-Prosthetics-Modular-Prosthetic-Limb-619-3164

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#131

  • Hitachi Ltd. is looking to promote artificial intelligence to management.The Japanese electronics maker said it has developed a new artificial intelligence program that will enable robots to deliver instructions to employees based on analyses of big data and the workers’ routines.Work efficiency improved by 8% in warehouses (WSJ)

  • iPhones, Apple TV, and a Huge iPad: Everything You Need to Know About the Apple Event (Bloomberg)
  • Japan’s All Nippon Airways unveils ‘Star Wars’-themed planes and entertainment
    SW-01-2-1170x429
  • If you think you aren’t dreaming at night, you’re probably wrong (QZ)
  • End of the road for journalists? Robot reporter Dreamwriter from China’s Tencent churns out perfect 1,000-word news story – in 60 seconds (South China Morning Post)
  • These are the the most crystal-clear images of Pluto yet (QZ / Nasa)
    pluto1
  • Why Facebook’s $2 Billion Bet on Oculus Rift Might One Day Connect Everyone on Earth (Vanity Fair)
  • Live Coding now lets you hire a developer and watch them work in real-time (The Next Web)
  • Google Fiber said Thursday that it’s considering expanding service to three new cities: San Diego, Louisville, Ky.; and Irvine, Calif. (WSJ)
  • Tencent Holdings Ltd. plans to add a personal loan feature to its popular WeChat smartphone messaging application later this month, in the latest step in the Chinese Internet giant’s expansion in online financial services, according to people familiar with the matter. (WSJ)
  • no company has done more than Apple to change the dynamic and balance of power in the mobile industry…
    Apple’s latest move is called the iPhone Upgrade Program. Following the lead of US mobile operators, Apple will sell its new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus on a monthly installment plan, starting at $32 per month, with annual upgrades to the latest model.
    …it does something more important: It converts its users from “carrier customers” to “Apple customers.” (QZ)
  • Robots Lay Three Times as Many Bricks as Construction Workers (QZ)
  • Japan’s population of centenarians (100 years old) now exceeds 61,000, the nation’s health ministry announced Sept. 11. (QZ)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#130

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#129

  • The 2015 Brookings Financial and Digital Inclusion Project Report [PDF]
  • Automobile Insurance in the era of autonomous vehicles KPMG [PDF]
    • Infographic Summary [PDF]
  • Both broadband availability and speed are strong drivers in an economy. (2011) Last year Ericsson and Arthur D. Little concluded that for every 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration GDP increases by 1 percent. (source)
  • impact of broadband on the economy [ITU 2012 PDF]
  • Apple Thursday sent out invitations to a Sept. 9 event in San Francisco (typically unveils new iPhones in the fall) (WSJ)
  • Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 1 billion people used the social network on the day of Aug. 24, setting a new milestone for the company. (QZ)
  • According to the NASA, seas around the world have risen an average of three inches (7.6 cm) since 1992, and as much as nine inches (23 cm) in certain places. (QZ)
  • A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly…
    …
    General George Patton said that, and I definitely subscribe to it. Do you remember the last time you were in a meeting and someone said, “We’re going to make this decision before we leave the room?” How great did that feel? Didn’t you just want to hug that person?… (QZ)
  • Appeal of Free: 75 Million Users Download Windows 10 in First Month (NYTimes)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#128

 

  • Google delays its modular smartphone until 2016
    Ara, an Android-based smartphone platform where nearly every piece of hardware, including the battery, processor and camera, is a separate piece of the handset that can be replaced or customized without upgrading to a completely new device.Google said the latest plan is to bring its modular smartphones to a “few locations” in the mainland United States for the initial rollout, but did not elaborate on the cause of the delay or the change of location.
  •  The “drinkable book” combines treated paper with printed information on how and why water should be filtered. Its pages contain nanoparticles of silver or copper, which kill bacteria in the water as it passes through. In trials at 25 contaminated water sources in South Africa, Ghana and Bangladesh, the paper successfully removed more than 99% of bacteria. (BBC)https://on.google.com/hub/ 
  • Google Won the Internet. Now It Wants to Cure Diseases
    Under Alphabet, life sciences will become its own independent division, though it doesn’t have an official name just yet. (The company says to expect more news soon.) But a few hints suggest the life sciences group had been operating fairly independently already. Last month, CFO Ruth Porat singled out life sciences during a quarterly earnings call as one of the areas Google sees as “longer-term sources of revenue.” To get there, the company has been quietly recruiting top scientific talent, from immunologists to neurologists to nanoparticle engineers. (Wired)
  • Rejoice: Google Just Created a Stupidly Simple Wi-Fi Router
    The most striking thing about the OnHub is the way it looks. It’s not your average router, with wires and antennas poking out from every side; it’s a large cylindrical device with a blinking light on the top, shades of the Amazon Echo or Apple’s Airport Extreme router. ..This is intentional: Google doesn’t want you to crawl behind your desk every time you need to get at your router. It wants the OnHub right in the center of everything. This itself is a boon to your connection; hiding your router behind closed doors or underneath your TV is horrible for your signal. (Yes, people do that.)…“We discovered that when you put a router on the floor,” Wuellner says, “versus on the shelf, the one on the shelf performs twice as well as the one on the floor.” Wuellner’s team also discovered that making it a tall cylinder made users less likely to stack things on top of it, which also destroys signal. (Wired)
  • Is The Bitcoin Community Facing an Existential Split?
    The debate revolves around a seemingly small point: whether or not to allow bitcoin’s open ledger, the blockchain, to accept block sizes greater than 1 megabyte. The blocks comprise individual bitcoin transactions; the transactions are packaged into blocks, confirmed, and added to the ledger. The ledger is maintained by the decentralized, independent consortium of miners. Today the size limit is being pressed as the system grows. The problem is that changing the limit at this point will alter the economics of bitcoin mining. Any change to the software requires agreement among the miners, and many have been vocal in their opposition. (WSJ)
  • What Boston Dynamics Is Working on Next (IEEE)
  • Today, 12% of organizations surveyed run 100% of their IT in the cloud; in five years almost 50% of our respondents said they will be moving their IT entirely to the cloud; in 10 years, that number will climb to nearly 70%. (Better Cloud)
  • Google says that its data center networks are some of the largest in the world. With its current network, called Jupiter, Google has succeeded in operating a network running on off-the-shelf switching components that has scaled to more than 1 petabit per second of total bisection bandwidth. Translated, that means each of the 100,000 servers in a warehouse-size data center can communicate with each other in an arbitrary pattern at 10 gigabits per second, according to a Google blog post, published Tuesday (WSJ)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#127

  • Google, Alphabet adlı yeni bir şirket altında yeniden organize oldu. Google Alphabet’in parçası olarak Arama, Reklam, Youtube,  Android, Chrome ve Bulut konuları üzerinde çalışmaya devam edecek. Google CEO’su Sundar Pichai oldu. Alphabet’in CEO’su ise Larry Page. Google X( otonom arabalar, teslimat drone’ları ve internet sağlayacı balonlar, Nest, Google Fiber, Google Yatırım ve diğer konular Alphabet bünyesinde devam edecek.
  • Adobe ve PageFair’in hazırladığı rapora göre reklam engelleme hizmetlerinin, reklamlara 2015 yılında22 milyar dolar etkisi olması bekleniyor. Şuan 198 milyon kişi reklam engelleme araçlarını kullanıyor. Rapora burdan erişebilirsiniz.
  • “The Apple Watch is going to gain a significant amount of penetration,” he said Thursday in a phone interview. “The first couple of years will be difficult for watches in fashion categories.”
    The market for watches that cost less than $1,000 is most at risk, as consumers in that price range have indicated they’re the most likely to buy an Apple Watch, Levin said. Sales of watches costing between $50 and $999 registered drops in June, the biggest being a 24 percent decline in timepieces from $100 to $149.99, according to NPD’s data. (Bloomberg)
  • Astronotlar uzayda 15 ayda kendi yetiştirdikleri sebzelerin tadına baktı.
  •  Yıldız Savaşları Yeni Fragman
  • Plastic balls help Los Angeles fight drought

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#126

  • Deutsche Bank Exploring Blockchain UsesDeutsche Bank has shed new light on its exploration of blockchain technology, amid growing interest by financial institutions in the software that powers bitcoin.In its response to a European Securities and Markets Authority consultation on virtual currencies and distributed ledger technology, published by the regulator on July 30, the German bank revealed it has been exploring the potential commercial application of distributed ledgers in areas including the enforcement and clearing of derivatives contracts, know-your-customer and anti-money laundering registries and surveillance, and securities asset servicing. (WSJ)
  • Germany’s Adidas AG is placing a costly bet on catching up with its rivals in the digital fitness world, agreeing to pay €220 million ($239 million) for Runtastic GmbH, an Austrian fitness app maker. (WSJ)
  • MH370: France launches searches around Reunion (BBC)
  • Osborne Effect ?
    3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models
    3D Systems, Stratasys struggle with an increasingly uncertain outlook (WSJ)
  • Google Inc and Samsung Electronics Co will release monthly security fixes for Android phones, a growing target for hackers, after the disclosure of a bug designed to attack the world’s most popular mobile operating system. (Reuters)
  • A Japanese engineer has developed a portable transporter small enough to be carried in a backpack that he says is the world’s first ‘car in a bag’. (Reuters)
  • The Richest People in Tech (Forbes)
  • Apple’s iOS 9: your device will automatically switch from WiFi to cellular data when the WiFi connection just doesn’t quite cut it. (Fortune)
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  • One of the first things Claure scrutinized closely in his first 90 days was Sprint’s 35,000-person call center operation. Agents recited dozens of rigid scripts for incident calls, whether or not they were relevant to the conversation. Why would someone try to sell a tablet computer to someone calling to report dropped calls, he mused. “We didn’t have a uniform process to handle similar calls.”Within weeks, Claure mandated simpler, more unified processes and took a personal interest in selecting the technology to run them. Ultimately, the project was entrusted to Pegasystems, the same software company overhauling customer engagement at American Express, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and United Health Group. (Fortune)

 

Weekly#125


 

  • Musk, Hawking Warn of Artificial Intelligence Weapons The missive, unveiled by the Future of Life Institute at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Argentina, labels autonomous weapons “the third revolution in warfare,” following gunpowder and nuclear arms. … “Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce.” … The experts warn that the deployment of autonomous systems may be possible in years not decades.  (WSJ)
  • Online-payments startup Stripe Inc. said it had raised new funding that values the five-year-old company at $5 billion from investors including Visa Inc. and venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. (WSJ)
  • Amazon has launched its music streaming service in the UK, in an attempt to entice more customers onto its Prime membership scheme (Telegraph)
  • A new prosthetic arm dubbed Iko can be endlessly customized with Lego pieces so that kids can make it whatever they want it to be. (Wired)
  • Facebook’s incredible user growth continues. Sometime this year—possibly this quarter—Facebook will pass 1 billion daily active users. And even sooner, it will pass 1.5 billion monthly active users—if it hasn’t already. (QZ)
  • Google Quietly Distributes New Version of Glass Aimed at Workplaces. Device is being pitched to industries such as health care, manufacturing, energy (WSJ)
  • Why Do We Listen to Music? (link)
  • Twilio Closes $130M Series E Round Led By Fidelity And T. Rowe Price (TechCrunch)


 

 

 


 

 


 

 

Weekly#124

  • 7 Rejections
  • How Strong Is Apple’s Grip Over Mobile Phones? The Short Answer: The iPhone commands 55% of industry revenue (WSJ)
  • Blog / Sam Altman /The days are long but the decades are short (link)
  • Sony said Wednesday it plans to create a drone company called Aerosense in a joint venture with Tokyo startup ZMP Inc., which specializes in autopilot technology. Aerosense will offer services such as inspecting aged infrastructure and surveying land that is difficult for people to access. “The key to driving growth in these areas will be adapting Sony’s innovation in various technologies,” including cameras and sensors (WSJ)
  • How Hackable Is Your Car? (Wired)
  • Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway (Wired)
  • Apple Inc. is recruiting experts from the auto industry, a signal that its efforts to develop an electric car could be gaining ground (WSJ)
  • more than 8,500 Apple Watch apps (the Verge)
  • Apple Quarter Results, Apple said Tuesday its profit surged 38%, aided again by strong demand for the company’s latest iPhones and robust growth in China where sales more than doubled. The gains lifted Apple’s cash reserves to a record $203 billion. (WSJ)
  • Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. unveiled plans Wednesday to protect user data on its cloud computing platforms globally, highlighting the e-commerce giant’s ambitions to expand its services in markets like the U.S. where it has plans to build a second data center. (WSJ)
  • GoPro Inc.’s revenue surged 72% in the second quarter, helped by strong demand for its wearable cameras in Europe and Asia.Revenue in the quarter ended June 30 was $419.9 million, up from $244.6 million a year earlier.  (WSJ)

 

 

 

  • Microsoft Quarter Results
    • Devices and Consumer revenue declined 13% (down 10% in constant currency) to $8.7 billion, with the following business highlights:· Windows OEM revenue decreased 22% as revenue was impacted by PC market declines following the XP end-of-support refresh cycle · Surface revenue grew 117% to $888 million, driven by Surface Pro 3 and launch of the Surface 3 · Total Xbox revenue grew 27% based on strong growth in consoles, Xbox Live transactions and first party games · Search advertising revenue grew 21% with Bing U.S. market share at 20.3%, up 110 basis points over the prior year · Office 365 Consumer subscribers increased to 15.2 million, with nearly 3 million subscribers added in the quarterCommercial revenue increased slightly (up 4% in constant currency) to $13.5 billion, with the following business highlights:· Commercial cloud revenue grew 88% (up 96% in constant currency) driven by Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM Online and is now on an annualized revenue run rate of over $8 billion · Server products and services revenue grew 4% (up 9% in constant currency), with stable annuity performance offsetting declines in transactional revenue · Dynamics revenue grew 6% (up 15% in constant currency), with the Dynamics CRM Online install base growing almost 2.5x · Office Commercial products and services revenue declined 4% (up 1% in constant currency), with continued transition to Office 365 and lower transactional revenue due to declining business PCs following the XP end-of-support refresh cycle · Windows volume licensing revenue declined 8% (down 4% in constant currency), driven primarily by transactional revenue declining following the XP end-of-support refresh cycle with annuity growth on a constant currency basis(Microsoft Investor Relations)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#123

  • OpenMind BBVA :Reinventing the Company in the Digital Age [PDF]
  • Business Model Examples

  • Commodore lives on as a C64 game-playing smartphone (Mashable)
  • Google and other companies will offer free or low-cost Internet service to more than 275,000 low-income households through a program called ConnectHome (Bloomberg)
  • Uber’s Manhattan Invasion Is Killing the Loan Market for Taxis Taxi companies typically borrow against the value of medallions — licenses to carry passengers — and then refinance the loans before they come due. Citigroup Inc. is trying to foreclose on 89 medallions, New York Community Bancorp Inc. put its taxi-loan portfolio up for sale, and credit unions with a combined $2.5 billion in medallion loans are suing the city for failing to stop Uber from stealing customers. Amid the turmoil, the value of a medallion has sunk to $770,000 from $1.1 million in 2013, according to data from the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission. (Bloomberg)
  • Immerz’s $150 Kor-FX 4DFX gaming vest promises to provide tactile feedback, like the ability to feel onscreen gunfire and explosions, on your chest by transforming audio into vibrations. (Mashable)

  • Google, Mozilla Disable Flash Over Security Concerns Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome browsers blocked old versions Adobe ‘s animation software — often used to play online videos — following news reports that hackers were using a security bug to take over peoples’ computers. (WSJ)
  • New Horizons : Pluto Flyby After nine-and-a-half years, New Horizons probe made Pluto flyby with more than 45.000 km/h speed in Jun 14,within 12,500km of the body’s surface. (WSJ Graphic )


 

 

  • Fantasy Sports Create Billion-Dollar Startups As appetites for daily fantasy sports grow among fans, FanDuel Inc., has raised $275 million in a round of venture funding with a post-money valuation of $1.275 billion, according to people familiar with the deal. (WSJ)
  • Mario Creator Tops List of Contenders to Lead Nintendo (WSJ)
  • According to a study (pdf) conducted at the school, computers loaded with Adblock Plus downloaded on average 25% less data than those without. Looking at video traffic alone, computers with Adblock Plus loaded as much as 40% less traffic. (QZ),
  • Google wants to make your cell phone’s screen disappear, In a patent awarded to the company July 14, Google outlined a new process for creating smartphone displays that match the color of the phone itself. Every cellphone on the market today has a screen that looks black when the display is off, but Google’s new idea could match the display color to the body of the phone using an electronically-controlled “color changing layer” that sits between the glass on the phone and the phone’s display. (QZ)