This week there was an exciting match up between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, a Google designed neural network built to do one thing: Beat the best at Go. We talked about the match up, the game and the implication in depth.
We also talked about the struggles of VR, the end of PageRank and the shortcomings of Tesla’s business model. But it’s not all doom and gloom, we also cover exciting photo sharing apps, the biggest acquisitions of the last year and the silver lining of surveillance capitalism.
It’s really hard for companies to build up the stack because they have to guess what they’re customers want. Furthermore, there’ll be a tendency to try and make their existing business’s life easy. This is what causes disruption! This week we talk about companies trying to move up the stack along with a bunch of other topics. See below for all the show notes.
This week we talk about Star Wars… A lot actually. We also dive into the world of self-driving cars, gaming, monopolies, and the future of medicine. All in all, it’s a solid show. Enjoy!
We cover a ton of news this week because so much of it is interrelated. If you take away one concept from this week, let it be this: Artificial intelligence continues to expand it’s capabilities and is aiding on the road, in the classroom, and on your face. AI will struggle to make surprise moves that turn out to be genus, and we need to often ask ourselves if it’s worth it.
Everything on the internet was once expected to be free (thanks Google). Then we started paying for songs (thanks Apple) and books (thanks Amazon). Soon it became normal to pay for things online. Then Netflix showed us that monthly subscriptions can be massively convenient for customers and super profitable for companies. It seems that all the major players are getting in on the monthly subscription goodness. But is it setting them up for a backlash when the economy turns and people start looking for ways to cut their monthly expenses?
We come to an inescapable conclusion in this episode: Elon Musk is a Super Villain. Think about it. He’s publicly stated that humanity will die in 20 years. He’s working on his own escape to another planet. And he’s creating autonomous robots (cars) that look sleek and people inherently trust. This is how it happens people!
This week we spend time diving into Google’s hardware announcements. Their phones look interesting and the Pixel tablet is particularly interesting (if you can handle the price). Overall Google continues to make solid improvements to their hardware offerings. Check below for all the stories we cover in this episode.
Fantastic 4 really wasn’t that fantastic…
The New York Times signs up over 1 million digital only subscribers, Verizon ditches the two year contract, Jennifer Granick pleads to to not give up our freedom at the Back Hat Conference, Epson tries to kill the ink cartridge (good luck with that), Uber is a Full-Stack Startup but Snapchat is not, Facebook continues to make Messenger attractive to businesses, Stems makes it possible split music into 4 separate tracks, Nico Gerard comes out with a watch that uses Apple Watch as an accessory (yes, really), Elon Musk can neither confirm nor deny the future of self-driver cars, Chris Sacca wants Jack Dorsey to be Twitter’s CEO, and VR movies are coming to Oculus (just like we said).
(Image: Copyright 2015 – Daniel Livingston – www.dplivingston.com)
Matthew watches Back to the Future with a live orchestra. How cool is that?!
We then talk about Flipagram’s huge growth, Google Photo’s back-up problem on Android, Amazon Prime and Walmart’s cheap competition, New Horizon’s visit to Pluto, Colin Cowherd’s comment about radio going away, Adobe’s death march, Fitbit vs the GoPro, Kevin Rose’s opinion on Reddit, firing from drones, Tesla future Roadster, eSport athletes doping up, and the Lumos bike helmet that lights up.
Also, we’re still experimenting with a short show. See if you can find it. :-)
This week we focus on Microsoft and their announcements at their Build Conference. In short: Continuum looks great, .NET aims to kill Java and Oracle, HoloLens to coming along just fine and Microsoft still doesn’t know how old you are.
We also chat about the Avengers (of course), the EM Drive, Facebook’s video chat feature, and Tesla’s home battery.