Dubai is now home to the world’s largest 3D-printed two-story building.
On Wednesday, officials in the city’s Warsan neighborhood unveiled the building, which is 9.5 meters (31 feet) tall and has a total area of 640 square meters (6,889 square feet). The structure’s concrete walls were constructed in place using a massive 3D printer — and the entire building serves as a testament to the power of 3D printing in construction.
Continue reading… “Watch a massive 3D-printed building take shape”
2020 predictions from IDCGETTY
IDC released today its worldwide IT industry predictions for 2020 in a webcast with Frank Gens, IDC’s senior vice president and chief analyst.
The focus for the 10 predictions for next year and beyond is the rise of the digital economy. By 2023, IDC predicts, over half (52%) of global GDP will be accounted for by digitally transformed enterprises. This digital tipping point heralds the emergence of a new enterprise species, the digital-first enterprise.
To drive digital supremacy, an enterprise must devote half of its budget to supporting digital innovation, establishing a large-scale, high-performing, digital innovation factories and a third-party ecosystem to produce digital products and provide fee-based wholesale digital services to other enterprise. The latter will be an entire new enterprise competency, similar to the management of Amazon’s platform for third-party sellers. IT resources will continue their migration to the cloud (and multi-clouds) and there will be heavy investment in automation and orchestration systems, using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Continue reading… “Top 10 tech predictions for 2020 from IDC”
Amazon just added a new perk to its popular Prime membership program: free grocery delivery.
Amazon Prime members will now be able to get two-hour grocery delivery for free.
Until now, Prime members had to pay an additional $14.99 per month to get access to Amazon Fresh, the company’s grocery delivery service.
The change reflects Amazon’s growing delivery efficiency, as it looks to shorten delivery time — which in turn leads to more frequent purchases and bigger spending.
Continue reading… “Amazon is making two-hour grocery delivery free for all Prime members”
While fintechs and other nonbank payments providers continue to carve out more market share for themselves, banks could face losing up to $88 billion in payments revenue to them. That’s the assessment from Accenture, the consulting firm that on Wednesday released its latest report, “5 Big Bets in Retail Payments in North America.”
Of that $88 billion, $82 billion is attributable to U.S. banks and $6 billion to Canadian institutions.
Payments revenue among U.S. and Canadian banks is slowing. According to Accenture, retail-payments revenue will likely grow at a compound annual rate of 4% over the next six years, going from $322 billion in 2019 to $405 billion in 2025. To ensure getting a share of that growth, banks and other payment-industry incumbents need to shift strategies, Accenture says.
As the world evolves to embrace the 4th industrial revolution, our workplaces are changing. Just as other industrial revolutions transformed the skillset and experience required from the workforce, we can expect the same from this revolution. Only five years from now, 35 percent of the skills seen as essential today will change according to the World Economic Forum. While we’re not able to predict the future, yet, here are the ten most important job skills (plus a bonus one) every company will be looking for in 2020.
Continue reading… “The 10+ most important job skills every company will be looking for in 2020”
Uber has unveiled more details about its plans for Eats delivery via drones. If all goes according to Uber’s plan, it will start flying its first drone model before the end of the year.
Uber’s design, which it unveiled at the Forbes 30 under 30 Summit today, is made to carry up to one meal for two people. Featuring rotating wings with six rotors, the vehicle can vertically take-off and land, and travel a maximum of eight minutes, including loading and unloading. The total flight range is 18 miles, with a round-trip delivery range of 12 miles.
As Uber previously said, the plan is not to use the drones for full delivery, but rather a portion of it. Once a customer orders food, the restaurant will prepare the meal and then load it onto a drone. That drone will then take off, fly and land at a pre-determined drop-off location.
Behind the scenes, Uber’s Elevate Cloud Systems will track and guide the drone, as well as notify an Eats delivery driver when and where to pick up their food. Down the road, Uber envisions landing the drones on top of parked Uber vehicles located near the delivery locations. From there, the Eats delivery driver will complete the last mile to hand-deliver the food to the customer.
Beginning next summer, Uber wants to use this drone for meal deliveries in San Diego. That would come after Uber first tests deliveries in partnership with drone operators and manufacturers.
Via Techcrunch.com
Self-driving cars within fleets will look alike, creating problems.
Have you ever seen a sea of yellow cabs, all of which seem indistinguishable from each other?
It used to be that if you booked a yellow cab for picking you up at a busy airport or similar venue, the odds were that a slew of other yellow cabs were also vying for picking up passengers there too. As such, you would have a tough time trying to figure out which among the multitudes of yellow cabs was the one designated just for you.
The cabs sometimes had a number displayed on the outside of the vehicle, and in theory, you could then spot your particular yellow cab, but possessing the number was one tricky aspect and the other was the arduous difficulty of trying to clearly see the number among the blur of so many cabs.
There was pretty much little point in reserving a cab beforehand and instead, it seemed wiser to take a chance at randomly hailing a cab.
Today’s world is a sea change, as it were.
Continue reading… “The problem with all self-driving cars looking alike”
People with celiac disease have two options in life, neither of which is ideal.
Because their immune systems can’t tolerate gluten, they can choose to never eat the many delicious foods containing it. Boring.
Or they can devour all the cake, bread, and beer they want — but resign themselves to abdominal pain, diarrhea, and other nasty side effects when their immune systems trigger an inflammation response in their small intestines.
Needless to say, people tend to choose the former option — but a new technology could allow them to have their cake and feel good about the decision later, too.
Researchers from Northwestern University developed the tech, which they presented on Tuesday at the European Gastroenterology Week conference, and it works by hiding a bit of gluten in a biodegradable nanoparticle.
Continue reading… “Nanoparticle tech reduces celiac disease symptoms by 90%”
Autonomous cars are set to take over the world’s roads, transforming the way we travel.
Leading the pack is Robocar, a futuristic self-driving electric vehicle from British start-up Roborace.
Roborace demonstrated its robot’s capabilities by taking the car to 282.42 km/h (175.49 mph) – an average confirmed by the UK Timing Association – at RAF Elvington, Yorkshire, UK, claiming the record for fastest autonomous car.
‘You can enjoy having the car to yourself’
Waymo, the self-driving division of Alphabet, is about to put more passengers its fully driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans. The company emailed its customers in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, to let them know that “completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way.” It’s a sign that Waymo is growing confident enough in its technology to increase the frequency at which it allows passengers to ride in autonomous vehicles without a safety driver behind the wheel.
Continue reading… “Waymo tells riders that ‘completely driverless’ vehicles are on the way”
The theory of Dunbar’s number holds that we can only really maintain about 150 connections at once. But is the rule true in today’s world of social media?
If you’ve ever been romantically rejected by someone who just wanted to be friends, you may have delivered a version of this line: “I’ve got enough friends already.” Your implication, of course, being that people only have enough emotional bandwidth for a certain number of buddies.
It turns out that’s not just an excuse. There are well-defined limits to the number of friends and acquaintances the average person can retain. But the question about whether these limits are the same in today’s digital world – one in which it’s common to have social media profiles, or online forums, with thousands of followers – is more complicated.
Continue reading… “Dunbar’s number: Why we can only maintain 150 relationships”
Detail from The Fountain of Youth (1546) by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Courtesy Wikipedia
Immortality has gone secular. Unhooked from the realm of gods and angels, it’s now the subject of serious investment – both intellectual and financial – by philosophers, scientists and the Silicon Valley set. Several hundred people have already chosen to be ‘cryopreserved’ in preference to simply dying, as they wait for science to catch up and give them a second shot at life. But if we treat death as a problem, what are the ethical implications of the highly speculative ‘solutions’ being mooted?
Of course, we don’t currently have the means of achieving human immortality, nor is it clear that we ever will. But two hypothetical options have so far attracted the most interest and attention: rejuvenation technology, and mind uploading.
Continue reading… “What are the ethical consequences of immortality technology?”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.