The Economics of IoT

iot

Product companies compete by building ever bigger factories to turn out ever cheaper widgets. But a very different sort of economics comes into play when those widgets start to communicate. It’s called the network effect—when each new user of a product makes its value higher. Think of the telephone a century ago. The greater the number of people who used Bell’s invention, the more valuable it became to all of them. The telephone became a platform for countless new businesses its inventor never imagined.

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Facial recog defeated by paper glasses

glasses

Researchers armed with some nifty algorithms and a set of paper glasses frames have found a way to trick facial recognition systems. Users can either evade being recognized – or more interestingly, impersonate another individual – with up to at least 80 per cent success rate, the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill boasted.

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Venezuelans turn to bitcoin as the bolívar crumbles

bit

Venezuela’s currency has lost so much of its value that people have given up on counting the notes—they just weigh piles of cash. So far this year, the bolívar has lost nearly half its value compared to the dollar, while inflation has shot up as much as 15 times. That’s according to best estimates, since official data isn’t available.

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Hackers could steal cellphone pictures from your IoT crock-pot

crock

If you have an internet-connected home appliance, such as a crock-pot, a lightbulb, or a coffee maker, you can control it from the comfort of your smartphone. However, a bug in the Android app that controls some of those devices made by a popular manufacturer also allowed hackers to steal all your cellphone photos and even track your movements.

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Nanobionic spinach plants detect explosives

MIT-Plant-Communication_0

Spinach is no longer just a superfood. By embedding leaves with carbon nanotubes, MIT engineers have transformed spinach plants into sensors that can detect explosives and wirelessly relay that information to a handheld device similar to a smartphone.

After sensing dangerous chemicals, the carbon-nanotube-enhanced plants send an alert.

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Portable iPhone-powered lab developed by research team that can detect cancer with 99% accuracy

iPhone cutaway diagram

It’s no secret that Apple has ambitious plans for iPhone and Apple Watch in the health industry, but it’s not the only company looking for ways to integrate smartphones in the medical field. Recently, a research team from Washington State University, under the leadership of assistant professor Lei Li, developed a portable laboratory that’s powered by a smartphone and capable of detecting cancer nearly instantly…

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AI: A five-point plan to stop the Terminators taking over

Boston Dynamics robots

Tech behemoths Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon announced this week that they are teaming up to develop new standards for Artificial Intelligence (AI). It’s a much-needed move. Soon AI will change everything from warfare to our bodies. But we don’t want to become slaves to the robots, so how do we stop the Terminators?

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Autonomous Are Microdrones Designed To Spy on Us

microdrone

 Drones are used for a variety of tasks including the delivery of goods, the monitoring of areas, and now with thanks to DARPA they can even search houses. These miniature drones are so small they can be used almost anywhere and are fairly undetectable to an unsuspecting person.

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Amid slowing growth for panels Elon Musk wants to sell you a better-looking solar roof

solar panels

Like some kind of 21st century Willy Wonka, audacious entrepreneur Elon Muskchose a prime spot on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot tour to unveil his latest attempt to energize an industry — roofs that generate solar power but look like no other.

Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Motors and chairman of SolarCity, showcased a line of high-design solar roof tiles that would replace clunky solar panels and tie into an upgraded version of the Tesla wall-mounted battery for those times when the sun doesn’t shine. The glass solar shingles resemble French slate, Tuscan barrel tile or more conventional roofing materials with a textured or smooth surface.

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Airbus: flying taxis a reality by 2020

Airbus flying taxi

Even as self-driving cars become more and more ubiquitous, there’s one problem that Silicon Valley hasn’t solved: the traffic jam. But Airbus Group, a U.S. aeronautics and space company, thinks that it has a solution. The company’s Silicon Valley branch recently announced it’s been working on a secret project titled “Vahana,” an autonomous flying vehicle that can be used for both passenger and cargo transport.

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