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This is Change Log — my semi-weekly observations and links on the intersection of tech, commerce, health, culture and markets
A London surgeon performed the first-ever live stream of a full surgical operation in virtual reality. A smartphone and a $20 Google Cardboard will get medical students and curious nonprofessionals the full immersive experience… Tesla is slowly but surely disrupting the massive global auto industry. Now it just needs to find a way to meet a production target… Facebook will start allowing ads in its Messenger mobile application. We know the social media giant wants to dominate the post application era and now we know how they’ll try to do that… A Russian entrepreneur wants to send tiny spaceships to Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our solar system. The smartphone-sized explorers will carry sensors, their own power source and be launched in large numbers… Research firm Gartner is reporting just 64.8 million PCs were shipped in the first quarter. That is the lowest sales level since 2007. First tablets, now PCs. Smartphones are eating everything… Google Calendar will now automatically add your “goals” to your calendar. Tell it you want to work out more and presto, you get time blocked off to hit the gym. The only catch is it also allows you to postpone and skip goals. Nothing to see here… Canada’s federal police, better known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, have had a master key to every Blackberry created for years despite that device’s reputation for tough encryption. That’s OK, nobody has Blackberrys anymore… Humans are way better than algorithms at directing laser beams in eggbox-like structures. That’s the finding based on a new mobile phone game. Now, if only there was a job with that description… Researchers discovered a critical security hole in Apple’s Quicktime for Windows software. Instead of fixing the flaw, Apple has decided to drop support for media players bundled with iTunes. Well, that’s one way to fix a problem… Bluetooth beacons and the Internet of Things are finally ready for prime time with Eddystone, an open-source technology from Alphabet. The secure and light technology, can beam a transit schedule near a bus stop or allow a user to send money to a nearby vending machine. Meant to be a rival of Apple’s iBeacon technology, it is a pretty cool enabler of the Internet of Things…
Robotics: Forget the global slowdown. Sales of robots that make cars and other industrial things rose 8% in 2015. Sales were robust in China, with a 16%. Read at Fortune here.
Mobile Hardware: Chinese device maker Meizu announced a flagship smartphone with a 10-core processor and a design that looks like the rumored iPhone 7. Can you copy a rumor? Read at The Verge here.
Popular Culture: Facebook had a big developer conference this week where it launched a bunch of new products including live video. Is Facebook becoming the Internet for too many? Read at Medium here.
Artificial Intelligence: Microsoft developed an artificially intelligent software agent capable of writing original stories about groups of photos based on the content. Read atVenture Beat here
Smart Cities: Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet, wants to build a smart city that incorporates self-driving cars, integrated transit and infrastructure and broadband. Read atRe/code here.
Virtual Reality: GoPro announced a virtual reality video app and a suite of tools, giving it an end-to-end VR solution. The actual GoPro VR camera setup will cost over $5,000. Read at Engadget here.
Fintech: India has a crazy idea: It wants to bring 1.2 billion people into online banking. The catch is most of those people have never even seen a physical bank, let alone dealt with one. Read at Bloomberg here.
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