Happy mid-January to you all! I hope everyone's had a productive and happy start to the year. As alwa
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January 16 · Issue #26 · View online
Technology, Startups & the Future. I'm lucky when it comes to finding amazing content written by others and want to share that luck with you. Find me at http://twitter.com/bryceadams 💖
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Happy mid-January to you all! I hope everyone’s had a productive and happy start to the year. As always, there wasn’t much news in the first week of the year, but last week saw the publication of quite a few good tech articles. The focus for this week’s Pivoting is on AI, technology in the home, and, as always, Facebook. I’ve also shared a couple products that I think you’ll like. 🎉
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“OK Facebook”—Why stop at assistants? Facebook has grander ambitions for modern AI
Facebook’s machine learning pipeline—from research to production—is aimed at an AI future. A great long-read from Ars Technica, providing an overview of Facebook’s history in AI and what the future holds for it. Unlike most tech companies, Facebook has taken an AI-first approach to everything it builds. The idea, outlined in this piece from Forbes last year, is to have an AI agent for every single Facebook user. From the Forbes piece: “We’re trying to build more than 1.5 billion AI agents—one for every person who uses Facebook or any of its products,” says Joaquin Candela, the head of the newly created Applied Machine Learning group. “So how the hell do you do that?” Why? Well, its all good and well to use AI to determine what users in general want to see, or to detect inappropriate content in general. But the key words there ‘in general’, apply to everyone. As individuals, we all have different ideas and interests about what interests us. Facebook wants to address that by using AI on an individual-level. My understanding from the Ars Technica article is that the real challenge here is actually on the hardware side. Breakthroughs like using GPUs (instead of CPUs) have helped, but there’s still a long way to go.
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Big Brother collecting big data — and in China, it's all for sale - World
Inside China’s Great Firewall, the internet is designed to gather information. And there’s an industry of private and state-owned high-tech enterprises serving it. Scary. It’s not surprising that the government is keeping an eye on everything, but I was concerned to read that pretty much anyone can get data on others for a price. And even more concerning - it’s not a very high price. An investigation by a leading Chinese newspaper, the Guangzhou Southern Metropolis Daily, found that just a little cash could buy incredible amounts of information about almost anyone. Friend or fiancé, business competitor or enemy … no questions asked.
Using just the personal ID number of a colleague, reporters bought detailed data about hotels stayed at, flights and trains taken, border entry and exit records, real estate transactions and bank records. All of them with dates, times and scans of documents (for an extra fee, the seller could provide the names of who the colleague stayed with at hotels and rented apartments).
All confirmed by the colleague. And all for the low price of 700 yuan, or about $140 Cdn.
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Two months after the Google Home's release, it still can't perform many basic tasks
When Google Assistant was first unveiled at Google I/O last year, it promised to be a more natural voice assistant - similar to Siri, Alexa, Cortana,… by Corbin Davenport in Editorials, News
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Alexa: Amazon’s Operating System
Yes, I know I share Ben’s articles in almost every issue, but they really are that good. This piece is no exception and well worth your time. The Echo created its own market: a voice-based personal assistant in the home. Crucially, the home was the one place in the entire world where smartphones were not necessarily the most convenient device, or touch the easiest input method: more often than not your smartphone is charging, and talking to a device doesn’t carry the social baggage it might elsewhere.
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Facebook is going to start showing ads in the middle of its videos and sharing the money with publishers
Mark Zuckerberg has been building a video empire. Time to turn it into a business. More Facebook! I think the first changes to Facebook videos we’ll see include longer videos, better content, and more significantly, a lot of the content creators we’re used to seeing only on YouTube making the move to Facebook. Competition is often good for consumers, and in this case, should be really good for creators, so I’m excited to see how this goes.
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Lyft Loses $600 Million in 2016 as Revenue Surges
U.S. ride-hailing startup is said to generate revenue of $700 million last year.
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Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton is now Snapchat’s chairman
Michael Lynton, the CEO of Sony Entertainment, will be stepping down from the company in order to serve as chairman of Snap (the makers of Snapchat).
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Opera Neon – The future of web browsers?
Opera Neon is our vision for the future of desktop browsers. Download this concept browser for free for Windows and Mac. This is genuinely very cool and usable, unlike similar products I’ve seen over the past few years. Excited to watch it grow!
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Metorik - Product Hunt
I was on Product Hunt! It was my 5th time having a product up there and was definitely a lot of fun. The feedback was good, a bunch of new stores signed up, and I can’t wait to get some new products up there soon!
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Home Assistant
I’ve recently been getting more and more into home automation. There’s so much already out there but the biggest problem I’ve found is connecting everything together. Fortunately I have the ability to code and can make most things work in unison, but it can be very difficult and time-consuming, and adding another device or making a change can take days. Recently I discovered Home Assistant through a friend. It’s a free, open-source platform for connecting all of your home’s ‘internet of things’ devices. I’m planning on getting it set up over the next few weeks! Have you had much experience using it? Would love to hear about it and how you’re automating your home. I’ll definitely be sharing more on my experience with it.
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