Author: azeeadmin

Sorry Santa Claus, Jeff Bezos is your Father Christmas now. Amazon, in its ongoing quest to utterly dominate the holiday season, has announced plans to start shipping real, live Christmas trees, come November.

That news comes courtesy of The Associated Press, which notes that the seven-foot-tall Douglas firs and Norfolk Island pines will be sent via Amazon box, sans water. Shipping should occur within 10 days of being cut down, so as to keep them green. The firs will run around $115 a pop, along with $50 for a wreath.

This isn’t the first time the online giant has dabbled in trees. Amazon dipped its toes in the water by offering up Charlie Brown-style trees measuring less than three-feet last year. Third-party sellers also used the platform to sell their own larger trees.

The whole prospect likely isn’t very appealing for those who’ve made tree shopping a part of their holiday ritual. Nor are owners of pop-up Christmas tree lots likely super psyched about Amazon’s dabbling. But the offering is about what the company has always been about above all else: convenience.

Blockchain is perhaps the most hyped technology of the past five years. The technology that allows us to create trustless immutable shared ledgers promises to bring transparency and honesty to commerce by disintermediating and decentralizing functions that rely on trusted third parties today. The promise and the potential are almost as big as the hype.

While still the early days, there are several applications that have already launched on blockchains — the first being the Bitcoin cryptocurrency payment protocol. Bitcoin is just a unit of account on blockchain. And more recently, with the implementation of smart contracts, code that is shared across the whole blockchain to execute conditionally with irrefutable results, we have the possibility to tokenize many new financial constructs on blockchains.

This has given rise to the ICO, a token-generation event whereby tokens are sold in order to raise financing for a blockchain project in which the tokens will serve some purpose. This innovation in finance changed the way startups raised funds in 2016, 2017 and 2018, with more than $18 billion dollars of funds pouring into blockchain startups in 2018 alone.

What has all this got to do with a patent war?

Everything. At the same time that the hype around blockchain has been growing, the number of patents filed has been growing, as well. What’s makes this technology different from past innovation explosions is that the startups are better funded than ever before.

Another very new factor is the ideology behind this innovation wave. A majority of these startups are founded on the basis of decentralization and open-source principals, meaning their code is open and they release it under the Apache 2.0 or similar open-source license. Philosophically, many project leaders are opposed to the very idea of intellectual property ownership such as patents.

This has several implications.

First, there are many technology startups working on cutting-edge innovations that are taking no precautions other than Apache Open Source licensing to protect their innovation. Many of these same startups have carried out ICOs and are now exceptionally well-funded with cash treasuries ranging from $10 million to $4 billion. There are several hundred young startup companies sitting on an average $25 million treasury that they are using to fund their development of open and freely accessible innovation.

Second, there is a small concentration of such well-funded startups that are patenting blockchain technology. That may be a precursor of future patent assertion entities (PAEs), commonly known as “patent trolls.”  Effectively, the modus operandi of some of these entities could be called “patent hoarding,” filing patents on any patentable aspect of blockchain that they can with the intent to become “patent trolls” in the future.

Increasingly, large corporations are also patenting blockchain technology, although their patents tend to revolve around their core businesses; for example Visa, has filed patents on blockchain technologies related to payment services as they would relate to credit card usage, and UPS has filed patents for blockchain technology in shipping.

Finally, putting these together we have a very interesting patent battlefield shaping up.

There are large corporations that will defend their core business by asserting their patents against challengers who threaten their revenue streams. This is typical behavior and is often derided as the reason patents can hold back innovation.

The more interesting players are the new ones. On the one hand you have very well-funded startups that have taken little to no precaution to protect their innovation. On the other hand you have very clever and agile PAEs, patent trolls, that are also well-funded and will use these resources to attack any startup that could be remotely considered to be infringing on their patent portfolio.

There has never been a case of so much free-floating cash being readily available in startups just waiting to be attacked. This could become a boon for the PAEs, a slaughter for the idealistic and well-funded startups and result in a massive transfer of funds from startups to PAEs in the coming years. This would be a very sad outcome for innovation.

Everyone is, of course, entitled to their own views on the value of patents and whether their company should file for them. But regardless of your position, we, as a community, must acknowledge that there are others in this world who are obtaining blockchain patents purely for their own profit motives. For example, Erich Spangenberg of IPwe has stated publicly, “… It is a curious path how a collection of misfit trolls, geeks and wonks ended up here — but we are going to crush it and make a fortune…” You can read more about Erich’s intentions here.

Because of this, it is important to take intellectual property very seriously. Make an effort to identify and patent your innovations. To that end you can join LOT Network, a nonprofit founded to allow patent holders to jointly protect each other from the eventuality that their operating patents will fall into the hands of a PAE.  This will improve your protection and help protect fellow network members from PAEs. Think of it as your “patent troll flu shot.”

The more blockchain innovators join together to protect and nurture our innovation, the better for our ecosystem. We all agree that patents in the wrong hands will hurt our industry and the speed at which others embrace blockchain. We all must take responsibility and be good corporate citizens when it comes to IP. By removing the uncertainty that comes from PAEs, we can avoid the turmoil and costly litigation we saw play out in the smartphone and semiconductor industries. If we remove friction, we can accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology. This tide will raise all boats.

Whether you are an investor or an entrepreneur in blockchain projects, you should strongly consider the manner by which your projects handle their intellectual property and do careful diligence to ensure that your interests are not threatened by a potential patent battle.

Plex today announced it’s shutting down its troubled Plex Cloud service, via a forum post that hasn’t found its way over to the company’s official blog — likely a choice the company made in order to downplay the news, or avoid media scrutiny. Plex Cloud, launched in fall 2016, was meant to serve as a way for Plex customers to save their files to online storage services like OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive, instead of having to host their saved files locally on their own machines or network-attached storage devices.

But now that will no longer be an option, as the service will stop functioning on November 30, 2018, Plex says.

Plex Cloud had struggled from the beginning with technical issues.

Almost immediately, its debut launch partner, Amazon, stopped working with Plex Cloud. Users were complaining that Amazon Drive files couldn’t be accessed and wondered if Amazon was imposing upload limits. There were also concerns that Plex Cloud users whose libraries included pirated movies and TV shows could be putting themselves at risk by publishing those files to the cloud.

Unlike Plex’s Cloud Sync, which syncs select local media to the cloud to access when the local server was offline, Plex Cloud is a full-fledged Plex Media Server in the cloud. That meant the media was hosted independently of local storage, and was transcoded for compatibility with Plex player apps, as needed.

This led to some technical challenges Plex hasn’t been able to overcome, though it sometimes declined to explain what exact challenges Plex Cloud was facing.

The company admitted last March the problems it was having were very difficult.

“It’s definitely not a trivial thing to take the best media server on the planet and make it work seamlessly as a scalable cloud service, load-balanced and clustered across multiple geographic regions. It turns out a lot can go wrong,” a blog post then admitted.

In February 2018, Plex announced it would disable new server creation for Plex Cloud users — something it said it had to do while “working to address challenges with performance, quality, and overall user experience inherent with cloud provider integrations.”

At the time, it said it would “evaluate the long-term plan for the service.”

The subtext, of course, was that Plex Cloud may be shut down if Plex couldn’t figure out how to overcome the technical issues.

Today’s that day, unfortunately.

Plex says it tried to address the issues that came up while keeping costs under control, but hasn’t found a solution.

The announcement states:

We’ve made the difficult decision to shut down the Plex Cloud service on November 30th, 2018. As you may know, we haven’t allowed any new Plex Cloud servers since February of this year, and since then we’ve been actively working on ways to address various issues while keeping costs under control. We hold ourselves to a high standard, and unfortunately, after a lot of investigation and thought, we haven’t found a solution capable of delivering a truly first class Plex experience to Plex Cloud users at a reasonable cost. While we are super bummed about the impact this will have on our happy Cloud users, ending support for it will allow us to focus on improving core functionality, adding new features and content, and delivering on our mission to provide a world-class product that we can all rely on and enjoy.

On November 30, 2018, Plex Cloud users will no longer be able to access their cloud server. That means customers who want to continue to stream those files through Plex will need to download them locally on a media server or NAS device on their local network.

Plex, of course, will not delete the files you’ve uploaded to cloud services, like Dropbox or Google Drive. They will remain there as long as you have a subscription to those services.

While the loss of Plex Cloud will be upsetting to Plex users who were happily enjoying the service without issues, the company’s decision to shutter instead of solve the problems is indicative of the new direction Plex has been headed in recent months.

Originally a software application designed for hosting users’ personal media collections, Plex has since launched its own tools for watching live TV through an antenna and recording shows to a DVR in an effort to attract the growing number of cord cutters. It has also launched support of podcasts and rolled out personalized apps in order to bring in more mobile users.

It’s unclear how well Plex’s shifts have been working to attract new users and paying subscribers, as the company doesn’t break out the latter figure. As of May, Plex said it had 15 million registered users.

After a two-year hiatus, Gawker is coming back. Peter Thiel, be damned.

Bustle-owner Bryan Goldberg, who paid $1.35 million for rights to the defunct gossip site in a bankruptcy auction in July, wrote in a memo to Bustle staff Tuesday that Gawker would relaunch next year with Amanda Hale, the former chief revenue officer of The Outline, as its publisher.

A spokesperson for Bustle confirmed the hiring and upcoming launch to TechCrunch, adding that Hale “will be responsible for building out the sales and marketing teams, and developing the overall strategy for the brand. Her first project will be to solidify a plan to ensure the Gawker archives have a safe and permanent home. We will be investing significant resources in this relaunch, and we will continue to make further announcements as plans progress.”

According to the memo, the new Gawker will take advantage of Bustle’s resources, technology and business platform.

“We won’t recreate Gawker exactly as it was, but we will build upon Gawker’s legacy and triumphs — and learn from its missteps,” Goldberg wrote. “In so doing, we aim to create something new, vibrant, highly relevant, and worth visiting daily … completely distinct from our other properties and sit within a separate corporate subsidiary,”

Here’s the full memo, obtained by The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Mullin:

Goldberg, a man, is the founder of Bustle, a site that creates content for millennial women. He’s raised some $80 million in venture capital for the site, which appears to have found its footing after a rough start. In 2014, one year after Bustle’s launch, Goldberg penned a painfully tone-deaf blog post announcing a $6.5 million round:

“Isn’t it time for a women’s publication that puts world news and politics alongside beauty tips?” he wrote. “What about a site that takes an introspective look at the celebrity world, while also having a lot of fun covering it? How about a site that offers career advice and book reviews, while also reporting on fashion trends and popular memes?”

Google Ventures pulled out of that round for ethical reasons following the blog post. Goldberg went on to ink deals with several VCs, including GGV, General Catalyst, Saban Capital Group and Social Capital.

As for Hale, she left The Outline in May amid struggles at the digital media startup. Just last week, The Outline announced it was laying off its remaining staff writers and would rely solely on freelancers. It’s likely nearing a shutdown, despite having raised $5 million in venture capital funding earlier this year.

The Outline’s reported struggles don’t hold a candle to Gawker’s tumultuous past.

Gawker parent company Gawker Media was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection when a Florida court ordered it to pay $140 million in damages to Hulk Hogan, who had sued Gawker for publishing his sex tape. The lawsuit, and two others against Gawker, was bankrolled by Peter Thiel. The PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley billionaire had a long-standing vendetta against the site since it reported that he was gay before he had come out publicly.

In its heyday, Gawker attracted 23 million visits in a month, according to Wikipedia. Based in New York and founded in 2003, Gawker Media also ran Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Kotaku — all of which were acquired by Univision for $135 million following the infamous lawsuit.

Knowledge, to paraphrase British journalist Miles Kington, is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing there’s a norm against putting it in a fruit salad.

Any kind of artificial intelligence clearly needs to possess great knowledge. But if we are going to deploy AI agents widely in society at large — on our highways, in our nursing homes and schools, in our businesses and governments — we will need machines to be wise as well as smart.

Researchers who focus on a problem known as AI safety or AI alignment define artificial intelligence as machines that can meet or beat human performance at a specific cognitive task. Today’s self-driving cars and facial recognition algorithms fall into this narrow type of AI.

But some researchers are working to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) – machines that can outperform humans at any cognitive task. We don’t know yet when or even if AGI will be achieved, but it’s clear that the research path is leading to ever more powerful and autonomous AI systems performing more and more tasks in our economies and societies.

Building machines that can perform any cognitive task means figuring out how to build AI that can not only learn about things like the biology of tomatoes but also about our highly variable and changing systems of norms about things like what we do with tomatoes.

Humans live lives populated by a multitude of norms, from how we eat, dress, and speak to how we share information, treat one another, and pursue our goals.

For AI to be truly powerful will machines to comprehend that norms can vary tremendously from group to group, making them seem unnecessary, yet it can be critical to follow them in a given community.

Tomatoes in fruit salads may seem odd to the Brits for whom Kington was writing, but they are perfectly fine if you are cooking for Koreans or a member of the culinary avant garde.  And while it may seem minor, serving them the wrong way to a particular guest can cause confusion, disgust, even anger. That’s not a recipe for healthy future relationships.

Norms concern things not only as apparently minor as what foods to combine but also things that communities consider tremendously consequential: who can marry whom, how children are to be treated, who is entitled to hold power, how businesses make and price their goods and services, when and how criticism can be shared publicly.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Successful and safe AI that achieves our goals within the limits of socially accepted norms requires an understanding of not only how our physical systems behave, but also how human normative systems behave. Norms are not just fixed features of the environment, like the biology of a plant. They are dynamic and responsive structures that we make and remake on a daily basis, as we decide whether or when to let someone know that “this” is the way “we” do things around here.

These normative systems are the systems on which we rely to solve the challenge of ensuring that people behave the way we want them to in our communities, workplaces, and social environments. Only with confidence about how everyone around us is likely to behave are we all willing to trust and live and invest with one another.

Ensuring that powerful AIs behave the way we want them to will not be so terribly different.  Just as we need to raise our children to be competent participants in our systems of norms, we will need to train our machines to be similarly competent. It is not enough to be extremely knowledgeable about the facts of the universe; extreme competence also requires wisdom enough to know that there may be a rule here, in this group but not in that group. And that ignoring that rule may not just annoy the group; it may lead them to fear or reject the machine in their midst.

Ultimately, then, the success of Life 3.0 depends on our ability to understand Life 1.0.  And that is where we may face the greatest challenge in AI research.

Knowledge, to paraphrase British journalist Miles Kington, is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing there’s a norm against putting it in a fruit salad.

Any kind of artificial intelligence clearly needs to possess great knowledge. But if we are going to deploy AI agents widely in society at large — on our highways, in our nursing homes and schools, in our businesses and governments — we will need machines to be wise as well as smart.

Researchers who focus on a problem known as AI safety or AI alignment define artificial intelligence as machines that can meet or beat human performance at a specific cognitive task. Today’s self-driving cars and facial recognition algorithms fall into this narrow type of AI.

But some researchers are working to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) – machines that can outperform humans at any cognitive task. We don’t know yet when or even if AGI will be achieved, but it’s clear that the research path is leading to ever more powerful and autonomous AI systems performing more and more tasks in our economies and societies.

Building machines that can perform any cognitive task means figuring out how to build AI that can not only learn about things like the biology of tomatoes but also about our highly variable and changing systems of norms about things like what we do with tomatoes.

Humans live lives populated by a multitude of norms, from how we eat, dress, and speak to how we share information, treat one another, and pursue our goals.

For AI to be truly powerful will machines to comprehend that norms can vary tremendously from group to group, making them seem unnecessary, yet it can be critical to follow them in a given community.

Tomatoes in fruit salads may seem odd to the Brits for whom Kington was writing, but they are perfectly fine if you are cooking for Koreans or a member of the culinary avant garde.  And while it may seem minor, serving them the wrong way to a particular guest can cause confusion, disgust, even anger. That’s not a recipe for healthy future relationships.

Norms concern things not only as apparently minor as what foods to combine but also things that communities consider tremendously consequential: who can marry whom, how children are to be treated, who is entitled to hold power, how businesses make and price their goods and services, when and how criticism can be shared publicly.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Successful and safe AI that achieves our goals within the limits of socially accepted norms requires an understanding of not only how our physical systems behave, but also how human normative systems behave. Norms are not just fixed features of the environment, like the biology of a plant. They are dynamic and responsive structures that we make and remake on a daily basis, as we decide whether or when to let someone know that “this” is the way “we” do things around here.

These normative systems are the systems on which we rely to solve the challenge of ensuring that people behave the way we want them to in our communities, workplaces, and social environments. Only with confidence about how everyone around us is likely to behave are we all willing to trust and live and invest with one another.

Ensuring that powerful AIs behave the way we want them to will not be so terribly different.  Just as we need to raise our children to be competent participants in our systems of norms, we will need to train our machines to be similarly competent. It is not enough to be extremely knowledgeable about the facts of the universe; extreme competence also requires wisdom enough to know that there may be a rule here, in this group but not in that group. And that ignoring that rule may not just annoy the group; it may lead them to fear or reject the machine in their midst.

Ultimately, then, the success of Life 3.0 depends on our ability to understand Life 1.0.  And that is where we may face the greatest challenge in AI research.

Apple keeps adding autonomous vehicles to its test fleet in California, boosting its ranks 27% since May, according to records from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

The company now has 70 autonomous vehicles permitted to test on public roads, Mac Reports first reported. The permits, which are issued by CA DMV, require a safety driver to be behind the wheel.

Over the past 18 months, Apple has gone from just three autonomous vehicles to 27 by January, 55 by May, and now 70. GM Cruise has the most permitted autonomous test vehicles at 175, followed by Waymo with 88. Apple has the third-largest fleet.

The number of permitted test vehicles is one of the only ways to track what Apple is up to. The company doesn’t talk about its self-driving vehicle program.

The tech company’s permit with the CA DMV, the agency responsible for monitoring AVs in the state, is the only official acknowledgment that it even has a program. Apple’s self-driving program has been considered an open secret in Silicon Valley. CEO Tim Cook  has more recently made references to the company’s interest in autonomous systems.

Last month, the company disclosed its first accident, according to a report filed with the CA DMV. The low speed accident occurred August 24. The number of accidents involving autonomous vehicles have become more common as companies put more of these self-driving cars on public roads. The vast majority are minor, low-speed incidents.

There was just one accident involving a self-driving vehicle (that one was owned by Delphi) reported to the DMV in 2014. So far this year, there have been more than 40 accidents involving self-driving cars reported to CA DMV.

Apple keeps adding autonomous vehicles to its test fleet in California, boosting its ranks 27% since May, according to records from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

The company now has 70 autonomous vehicles permitted to test on public roads, Mac Reports first reported. The permits, which are issued by CA DMV, require a safety driver to be behind the wheel.

Over the past 18 months, Apple has gone from just three autonomous vehicles to 27 by January, 55 by May, and now 70. GM Cruise has the most permitted autonomous test vehicles at 175, followed by Waymo with 88. Apple has the third-largest fleet.

The number of permitted test vehicles is one of the only ways to track what Apple is up to. The company doesn’t talk about its self-driving vehicle program.

The tech company’s permit with the CA DMV, the agency responsible for monitoring AVs in the state, is the only official acknowledgment that it even has a program. Apple’s self-driving program has been considered an open secret in Silicon Valley. CEO Tim Cook  has more recently made references to the company’s interest in autonomous systems.

Last month, the company disclosed its first accident, according to a report filed with the CA DMV. The low speed accident occurred August 24. The number of accidents involving autonomous vehicles have become more common as companies put more of these self-driving cars on public roads. The vast majority are minor, low-speed incidents.

There was just one accident involving a self-driving vehicle (that one was owned by Delphi) reported to the DMV in 2014. So far this year, there have been more than 40 accidents involving self-driving cars reported to CA DMV.

The sophisticated head-tracking system like the one built into the iPhone X may have been intended for AR and security purposes, but it may also turn out to be very useful for people with disabilities. A proof of concept app from an eBay intern shows how someone with very little motor function can navigate the site with nothing but head movements.

Muratcan Çiçek is one such person, and relies on assistive technology every day to read, work and get around. This year he was interning at eBay and decided to create a tool that would help people with motor impairments like his to shop online. Turns out there are lots of general-purpose tools for accessibility, like letting a user control a cursor with their eyes or a joystick, but nothing made just for navigating a site like eBay or Amazon.

His creation, HeadGaze, relies on the iPhone X’s front-facing sensor array (via ARKit) to track the user’s head movements. Different movements correspond to different actions in a demonstration app that shows the online retailer’s daily deals: navigate through categories and products by tilting your head all the way in various directions, or tilt partway down to buy, save or share.

You can see it in action in the short video below:

It’s not that this is some huge revolution in interface — there are some apps and services that do this, though perhaps not in such a straightforward and extensible way as this.

But it’s easy to underestimate the cognitive load created when someone has to navigate a UI that’s designed around senses or limbs they don’t have. To create something like this isn’t necessarily simple, but it’s useful and relatively straightforward, and the benefits to a person like Çiçek are substantial.

That’s probably why he made the HeadGaze project open source — you can get all the code and documentation at GitHub; it’s all in Swift and currently only works on the iPhone X, but it’s a start.

Considering this was a summer project by an intern, there’s not much of an excuse for companies with thousands of developers to not have something like it available for their apps or storefronts. And it’s not like you couldn’t think of other ways to use it. As Çiçek writes:

HeadGaze enables you to scroll and interact on your phone with only subtle head movements. Think of all the ways that this could be brought to life. Tired of trying to scroll through a recipe on your phone screen with greasy fingers while cooking? Too messy to follow the how-to manual on your cell phone while you’re tinkering with the car engine under the hood? Too cold to remove your gloves to use your phone?

He and his colleagues are also looking into actual gaze-tracking to augment the head movements, but that’s still a ways off. Maybe you can help.

Twilio, a company best known for supplying a communications APIs for developers has a product called Twilio Flex for building sophisticated customer service applications on top of Twilio’s APIs. Today, it announced it was acquiring Ytica (pronounced Why-tica) to provide an operational and analytical layer on top of the customer service solution.

The companies would not discuss the purchase price, but Twilio indicated it does not expect the acquisition to have a material impact on its “results, operations or financial condition.” In other words, it probably didn’t cost much.

Ytica, which is based in Prague, has actually been a partner with Twilio for some time, so coming together in this fashion really made a lot of sense, especially as Twilio has been developing Flex.

Twilio Flex is an app platform for contact centers, which offers a full stack of applications and allows users to deliver customer support over multiple channels, Al Cook, general manager of Twilio Flex explained. “Flex deploys like SaaS, but because it’s built on top of APIs, you can reach in and change how Flex works,” he said. That is very appealing, especially for larger operations looking for a flexible, cloud-based solution without the baggage of on-prem legacy products.

What the product was lacking, however, was a native way to manage customer service representatives from within the application, and understand through analytics and dashboards, how well or poorly the team was doing. Having that ability to measure the effectiveness of the team becomes even more critical the larger the group becomes, and Cook indicated some Flex users are managing enormous groups with 10,000-20,000 employees.

Ytica provides a way to measure the performance of customer service staff, allowing management to monitor and intervene and coach when necessary. “It made so much sense to join together as one team. They have huge experience in the contact center, and a similar philosophy to build something customizable and programmable in the cloud,” Cook said.

While Ytica works with other vendors beyond Twilio, CEO Simon Vostrý says that they will continue to support those customers, even as they join the Twilio family. “We can run Flex and can continue to run this separately. We have customers running on other SaaS platforms, and we will continue to support them,” he said.

The company will remain in Prague and become a Twilio satellite office. All 14 employees are expected to join the Twilio team and Cook says plans are already in the works to expand the Prague team.