Daily Tech Headlines – May 9, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – May 9, 2018 | |
| Number | 498 |
| Broadcast Date | MAY 9, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 5:18 |
| Hosts | Sarah Lane |
Google I/O kicks off with tons of announcements, Walmart buys a majority stake in Flipkart, Amazon invests in the Boston area.
Headlines
- Google I/O kicked off yesterday, and the announcements were aplenty. Of note, Google is adding morse code to Gboard for accessibility on both Android and iOS. Google Photos will start suggesting fixes to photos like rotations, brightness, new colorizing tools, etc. Gmail will get Smart Compose which pops up suggestions to complete the sentence you're writing. Google Assistant will now be able to answer followup questions without needing you to keep saying the trigger phrase, dubbing the feature "continued conversation. A new feature called Google Duplex brings together text to speech deep learning, allowing Google's assistant to make calls to salons and restaurants understanding the context, on a user's behalf. A new setting called "Pretty Please" launching later this year teaches children to use polite language and get positive reinforcement from Google's Assistant. Assistant is getting 6 new voices, including singer John Legend's, later this year. Lenovo smart Displays with Google Assistant are coming in July. Google News is getting an AI overhaul to better understand your behaviors and what you like to read, giving you 5 top stories right at the top when you open the app. Lots of Android announcements, such as Adaptive Battery which uses deep learning to figure out which apps you'll likely use and manages battery life appropriately. Google Maps is getting integration with Google Assistant so you can ask it to do things like share ETA, control music and more without touching anything. And a new maps feature called For You will feature recommendations and trending listings. Google will now combine AI with Street View on Google Maps, with labels for directions and locations on the screen. Google Lens will use image and object recognition to identify stuff in photos like landmarks and food.
- Walmart is buying 77%, of Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart for $16 billion. Walmart said in a statement that its long-term goal is to support Flipkart's transition into a publicly-listed subsidiary. The retailer said it expects India's e-commerce market to grow at four times the rate of the overall retail industry. SoftBank, currently one of the largest shareholders in Flipkart, may sell its entire stake as part of the deal, sources say. Flipkart has 100 million users signed up to its platform, according to the company's website.
- Facebook announced Chris Cox will run a new division called Family of Apps which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. David Marcus of Messenger will run a new team dedicated to the Blockchain, which along with Ar, VR and AI will be part of a new division called New Platforms and Infra under CTO Mike Scroepfer. And VP of Growth Javier Olivan, will oversee “Central product services,” which includes shared features like ads and security. Facebook also named Chris Daniels to take over as VP of WhatsApp. Daniels has been running Facebook's Internet.org efforts which offers Free Basics by Facebook.
- Phoenix is launching Waymo service later this year. Waymo intends to partner with multiple car companies. CEO John Krafcik said deep learning research from Google Brain reduced error rate for detecting pedestrians by 100x. Waymo says it has logged 6 million miles and also runs a constant simulation with 25k cars in it. Simulations have allowed them to learn how to see through weather-related sensor noise like snow.
- Apple has been removing apps that share location data with third-parties without explicit user consent, and informing the app developers that their app violates two parts of the App Store Review Guidelines. Apple explains that developers must remove any code, frameworks, or SDKs that relate to the violation before their app can be resubmitted to the App Store.
- Amazon announced Tuesday that it is moving into a 430,000 square-foot office in the Seaport area of Boston with plans to open in 2021. The company says that will lead to 2,000 new jobs, doubling its tech workforce in the Boston area. Amazon says it has created 3,500 jobs in Boston's state of Massachusetts since 2011. Amazon workers in Boston mainly focus on Alexa, Amazon Web Services and audio book service Audible. The Boston area is still in the running to land Amazon’s second headquarters.
- The Signal desktop client app for Mac, if using the default settings on a Mac, means that your friends’ messages appear—and stay—on the operating system’s notifications bar even if the message is set to self-destruct using Signal’s timer, including sender’s name and the message’s content. Apple did not respond to a request for comment on how MacOS handles notification data. Mac security researcher Patrick Wardle says disappearing messages that have appeared as notification can be recovered later, even after they are gone within the Signal app. Open Whisper Systems, the organization that develops Signal, has not yet commented.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – May 8, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – May 9, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – May 10, 2018" |