One of the best announcements that came out of this year’s Google I/O was a new Gmail feature called Smart Compose, which can autocomplete entire emails for you.
Unlike many of the other announcements from Google I/O, Gmail Smart Compose can actually be switched on and used right now. It’s all part of the new Gmail experience that Google has been rolling out to customers.
Didi suspended its ride-sharing service after a 21-year-old woman was murdered. Carlos Jasso/Reuters
Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-sharing giant, said it would remove creepy passenger ratings from its app after a woman was allegedly murdered by her driver.
Didi’s Hitch service lets people share rides, but was suspended last week after the murder.
Didi said it would also remove passenger photos and was even considering voice recording every trip to resolve passenger disputes.
The ride-sharing service has 450 million users, and has little competition after Didi acquired Uber’s Chinese business in 2016.
… and microscale robot exoskeleton muscles from graphene and glass.
A cross section of a muscle fiber grown from induced pluripotent stem cells, showing muscle cells (green), cell nuclei (blue), and the surrounding support matrix for the cells (credit: Duke University)
Biomedical engineers at Duke University have grown the first functioning human skeletal muscle from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). (Pluripotent stem cells are important in regenerative medicine because they can generate any type of cell in the body and can propagate indefinitely; the induced version can be generated from adult cells instead of embryos.)
Continue reading… “How to grow functioning human muscles from stem cells”
iPS procedure raises hopes for alternative to donations and artificial organs
TOKYO — Japan is set to host the world’s first clinical trials involving the use of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to treat heart failure.
A special health ministry panel on Wednesday gave Osaka University the green light to carry out the study, pending final authorization from the health minister. This would be the second instance of using iPS-derived cells for disease treatment in Japan, after groundbreaking trials involving retinal cells launched in 2014.
Continue reading… “Japan approves first trials of stem cell-based heart treatment”
After 26 years, Boston Dynamics is finally getting ready to start selling some robots. Founder Marc Raibert says that the company’s dog-like SpotMini robot is in pre-production and preparing for commercial availability in 2019. The announcement came onstage at TechCrunch’s TC Sessions: Robotics event today at UC Berkeley.
“The SpotMini robot is one that was motivated by thinking about what could go in an office — in a space more accessible for business applications — and then, the home eventually,” Raibert said onstage.
Continue reading… “Boston Dynamics will start selling its dog-like SpotMini robot in 2019”
Fiat money will lose its significance to gold and the cryptocurrencies in the next twenty years, said Robert Kiyosaki, bestselling author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and his latest ,”Why The Rich Are Getting Richer.”
The self-proclaimed gold bug is one of few investors to be bullish on both bitcoin and gold, noting that the cryptocurrency will slowly erode fiat currencies’ relevance, while gold will act as an important hedge instrument.
Continue reading… “The dollar will be replaced by gold and cryptocurrency by 2040”
The tech company’s self-driving program continues to flourish.
Apple has more than doubled the number of its self-driving cars, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has confirmed. Since obtaining a permit to test autonomous vehicles, Apple’s fleet size has steadily risen — from a scant three test cars, to 27 in January, and now, 55 intelligent machines. Should the program remain on course, consumers could be chilling out in the driver’s seat by 2019.
Continue reading… “Apple now has more than 50 autonomous cars on the road”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has doubled down on his vision of car driving of the future.
During a conference call on its latest earnings announcement, Musk said he foresaw individuals sharing their electric, self-driving vehicles.
“The way things are obviously rolling towards is a shared electrical autonomy model,” said Musk.
Continue reading… “Elon Musk talks car sharing for the future”
They call it “the hive,” or “the grid.” Or sometimes just: “the machine.” It’s a huge structure that fills a warehouse on the outskirts of Andover, a small and quiet town in southeast England. It’s impossible to take in at a single glance, but standing on a maintenance walkway near the building’s rafters, you look over what seems to be a huge chessboard, populated entirely by robots. There are more than a thousand of them, each the size and shape of a washing machine, and they wheel about, night and day, moving groceries. Their job is to be cheaper and more efficient than humans, and they are very good at it.
The hive-grid-machine is the creation of Ocado, a British online-only supermarket that’s made a name for itself in recent years designing highly automated warehouses and selling the tech to other grocery chains. When fully up and running, Ocado’s Andover operation will be its most advanced yet, processing 3.5 million items or around 65,000 orders every week. It’s also a perfect example of the wave of automation slowly hitting countries around the world. The tasks being undertaken by Ocado’s bots are so basic they’re best described by simple verbs — “lifting,” “moving,” “sorting” — and that means they exist in various forms in a range of industries. And when the price is right, someone will want a machine to do those jobs, too.
Continue reading… “Welcome to the automated warehouse of the future”
Richard Florida: One of the most persistent myths in America today is that urban areas are innovative and rural areas are not. While it is overwhelmingly clear that innovation and creativity tend to cluster in a small number of cities and metropolitan areas, it’s a big mistake to think that they somehow skip over rural America.
A series of studies from Tim Wojan and his colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service documents the drivers of rural innovation. Their findings draw on a variety of data sets, including a large-scale survey that compares innovation in urban and rural areas called the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey (REIS). This is based on some 11,000 business establishments with at least five paid employees in tradable industries—that is, sectors that produce goods and services that are or could be traded internationally—in rural (or non-metro) and urban (metro) areas.
A $25,000 robot barista serves 120 cups of coffee an hour — and it is part of a growing ‘robot revolution’ that could kill millions of jobs .
“I don’t see the robot revolution as a problem,” 24-year-old inventor Henry Hu told CNBC.
More restaurants and coffee shops are investing in automation and replacing jobs with robot labor.
Continue reading… “Robot barista reveals dangerous rise of automation”
Facebook is exploring the creation of its own cryptocurrency, a virtual token that would allow its billions of users around the world to make electronic payments, people familiar with Facebook’s plans told Cheddar.
“They are very serious about it,” said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced plans.
Continue reading… “Facebook plans to create its own cryptocurrency”
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