(Patent) Amazon Wins Patent for Robots That Drop Off Bunches of Items on Delivery Routes
[Tech]
2020/01/22 09:09
BOT or NOT? This special series explores the evolving relationship between humans and machines, examining the ways that robots, artificial intelligence and automation are impacting our work and lives.A diagram from Amazon’s patent application shows a customer issuing a command to open up one of the doors on a storage compartment vehicle. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO)Amazon is already testing...
Tesla Model 3 Survey - Tesla’s Hell Moves From the Production Line to the Repair Shop
[Consumer]
2020/01/22 09:08
We asked 5,000 owners about life with the Model 3. We found struggles with service, praise for Superchargers and a battery that performs like no other.By the end of 2018, Tesla’s customer service was overwhelmed. Phone calls and emails went unreturned, repairs were delayed, and drivers involved in crashes sometimes waited months to get parts. After a year and a half of production, there were a...
These Salad Vending Machines are Going to be a Lot Easier to Find in New York - Fresh Bowl
[Product]
2020/01/22 09:07
Fresh Bowl aims to have 50 vending machines operating by the end of this year, and a total of 100 in 18 months.Less than a year after launching in New York City, Fresh Bowl, the company that offers vending machine salads and other on-the-go meals in returnable glass to hungry commuters as a way to cut down on our immense food packaging waste, has big plans to expand. Currently, there are just f...
Worldwide Market for Used Smartphones Forecast to Grow to 332.9 Million Units with a Market Value of $67 Billion in 2023
[Business]
2020/01/22 09:06
International Data Corporation (IDC) expects worldwide shipments of used smartphones, inclusive of both officially refurbished and used smartphones, to reach a total of 206.7 million units in 2019. This represents an increase of 17.6% over the 175.8 million units shipped in 2018. A new IDC forecast projects used smartphone shipments will reach 332.9 million units in 2023 with a compound annual...
CES 2020 - GuRu’s Robot Could Charge Up Your Devices Wirelessly Over a Distance
[Product]
2020/01/22 09:05
Another day at CES 2020, another company ready to make the dream of wireless charging over distance a reality. This time around it was GuRu’s turn to show us three demonstrations of wireless charging over distance working in different ways.First was a transmitter with a square base section around a foot and a half across with a frame that held an angled panel about the same size again in place...
Influencer Marketing : State of the Social Media Influencer Market in 2020
[Business]
2020/01/22 09:04
As influencers become more plentiful and proven, brand dollars have flooded into the space. Brands are set to spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022, per Business Insider Intelligence estimates, based on Mediakix data.Partnering with influencers is already familiar to many brands, but the market is undergoing constant change: Brands must continually evolve their strategies acco...
(PDF) PwC - Annual Global CEO Survey
[Business]
2020/01/21 09:10
Navigating the rising tide of uncertainty. 23rd Annual Global CEO Survey.What a difference two years can make. In 2018, PwC’s Annual Global CEO Survey revealed a record level of optimism regarding worldwide economic growth. This year, as CEOs look ahead to 2020, we see a record level of pessimism. For the first time, more than half of the CEOs we surveyed believe the rate of global GDP growth...
(Paper) VMocap : Synergetic Reconstruction for Wide-Space Multi-Person Video Motion Capture
[Tech]
2020/01/21 09:09
Synergetic Reconstruction from 2D Pose and 3D Motion for Wide-Space Multi-Person Video Motion Capture in the Wild.Although many studies have been made on markerless motion capture, it has not been applied to real sports or concerts. In this paper, we propose a markerless motion capture method with spatiotemporal accuracy and smoothness from multiple cameras, even in wide and multi-person enviro...
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It - Clearview AI
[Business]
2020/01/21 09:08
A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.Until recently, Hoan Ton-That’s greatest hits included an obscure iPhone game and an app that let people put Donald Trump’s distinctive yellow hair on their own photos.Then Mr. Ton-That — an Australian techie and onetime m...