It’s our seasonal finale where we review our predictions for the year and review what happened. There’s a lot packed into the 45 minute show (the prediction show, #275, was 3 hours!) Each of the predictions are captured below.
304: Waymo’s Over-Engineering of Self-Driving Cars
Waymo (part of Alphabet, formally Google) is on a quest to capture every single corner case there is when it comes to autonomous self-driving cars. To help that effort, they literally created fake streets that where difficult for the cars to figure out. Then, they created a simulation machine to run thousands of permutations to make sure the car can handle every single possible situation. It sounds over-engineered, but as they argue, when lives are on the line and anything short of perfection is unacceptable. In this episode we dive into the details of what they’ve been up to.
297: Meeker’s Internet Trends And The Reality Of AI
Mary Meeker shared her 2017 internet trends report this week. It’s super long, but we broke it down to the good stuff. We also talk about the future of AI and how it’ll get smarter in a beyond-exponential way. The rest of the stories are below.
296: The Future Of Ambient Computing And AlphaGo’s Dominance
The future of tech is ambient computing according to Walt Mossberg… and he’s probably right. In the future, technology won’t be about gadgets and hardware because it’ll be always present, in the background, waiting to help when you need it. It’s a very cool picture of the future he leaves us with. The rest of the stories are below.
295: Big News From Maker Faire, Google IO and Techcrunch Disrupt
What a great week to be interested in tech! Google held their annual conference and showed off some sweet new tech that will be released… someday… Honestly, it felt more like an awesome TED talk than an actual product announcement, but it was still cool! Matthew also visited the Maker Faire and TechCrunch held their conference in New York. All the stories are below.
294: Amazon Shows Off Their New Echo And Microsoft Builds A New Platform
Amazon showed off their new echo: Echo Show, which comes with a display to augment Alexa’s voice control. Think of it as a video conference landline, which the possible potential to be MUCH more. At $320, it isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you have the right use case, it’s a great product. The rest of the stories are below.
292: If It’s Not A Flying Car Then This Isn’t A Podcast
This week’s podcast was all about self driving and flying cars. For whatever reason Tesla, Waymo, Apple, Uber, and Kitty Hawk all felt the need to share updates. There’re all super cool (below) and it’s clear that many companies are getting closer to real products. We also touch on stock trading, social sharing and net neutrality. All the summaries are below.
291: Facebook Builds A New Platform, But Will It Become A New Community?
Facebook held their F8 developers conference last week and they continued to build out their platform. The big focus was creating a camera effects platform where developers can create their own filters for people. They also created more bots for Messenger and showed of some new VR spaces. Facebook continues to demonstrate that they’re a technology company and not just a social media website. The rest of the stories are below.
286: Parallel Learning In Video Games And The End Of AntiVirus
(Image: vivifychangecatalyst.wordpress.com)
The new Zelda game is a great example of parallel learning that let’s you learn at your own pace, and on the things you want to learn. This is in contrast to serial learning which requires you to follow a pre-defined path. This, is mostly likely the future of adult and college education because maximizes how much you learn.
Oh yeah! Good news: you don’t need antivirus software anymore if you promise not to visit bad sites (though, Chrome won’t let you even if you wanted to), you don’t download software from CNET, and you don’t let your kids use your computer.
The rest of this week’s stories are below.
283: Uber Is Doomed
Uber is doomed because of a credibility problem. Just in the last month people are boycotting them, they’re accused of misogyny, they’re sued for stealing data, and continue losing money on each ride. It’s not a great recipe for success. It’s a good thing they’re not trying to IPO (like Snap). See below for the rest of the important news this week.