Daily Archives: July 21, 2017

Lyft believes that by 2021, a majority of its rides will be in autonomous vehicles. But up until recently, it has been reluctant to do any of the expensive work of building and installing the technology necessary to power these self-driving cars. Today, the ride-hail company said it would finally go beyond partnering with other companies on autonomous driving, and in a significant shift, it will start building some of the technology itself.

Its a bold move for a company that, to date, has been content to simply partner with more experienced automakers and tech firms that already have huge head starts in designing the complex technology that powers self-driving cars. Lyft said it was motivated by a desire to stay competitive in the rapidly evolving field of transportation and automation. (The announcement was previewed in Fortune earlier this week.)

Were going to be creating that technology, developing that technology.

Theres an open platform, explained Raj Kapoor, chief strategy officer at Lyft, at a briefing with reporters Wednesday. Someone, like our existing partners like NuTonomy, brings a vehicle with their own system, plugs it in to the Lyft network and theyre moving. What were also doing now is creating the software and hardware to enable a car to be autonomous. Were going to be creating that technology, developing that technology, and then working with partners in the auto industry who are going to be creating the vehicles, bringing the two together, and also putting those on the Lyft network.

While Uber stumbles from one crisis to the next, Lyft has sought to capitalize on its main rivals missteps. The ride-hail company teamed up companies like General Motors, Waymo, NuTonomy, and Jaguar Land Rover. The message was that the automakers would provide the cars, the tech firms would build the sensors and mapping equipment, and Lyft would provide the outlet through which these self-driving cars would be deployed and earn money. Now, perhaps enticed by predictions of a $7 trillion autonomous driving industry, Lyft is saying it wants a build its own technology stack so it can operate its own self-driving cars.

To accomplish this, Lyft is opening a new 90,000-square-foot engineering facility in Palo Alto, California, that its calling the Level 5 center in reference to the most advanced level of autonomous driving. Kapoor said the goal is to have hundreds of engineers working out of the facility by the end of 2018.

Lyft describes the fleet of autonomous vehicles that will be operating on its platform in the near future as a hybrid system that will eventually include hundreds of thousands of cars. Lyft wouldnt put an exact number on it, nor would it say how much money it would be willing to spend. The companys executives reasserted their earlier promise to launch a test pilot with NuTonomys self-driving cars in Boston later this year.

The company was vague about what components it would actually be building

The company was also vague about what components of a self-driving car it would actually be building itself. For example, Luc Vincent, the companys lead engineer who recently came over from Google, wouldnt commit to building his own LIDAR, despite the fact that light detection and ranging sensors are the most common feature on autonomous vehicles operating today.

Were not going into LIDAR building, Vincent said. But well be packaging that in the best possible way for our needs. In other words, well be doing perception the hardware piece as well as the software piece. Early on, Lyfts self-driving cars will be outfitted with off-the-shelf LIDAR because it is convenient, Vincent said, but could be replaced by something more advance in the long term. Thats TBD, he said.

In terms of why, at this relatively late stage in the game, Lyft was jumping into this expensive and potentially fraught new enterprise, Kapoor said the company had very little choice. We believe its inevitable that this is where the world is going, he said. We need to be playing this role. We cant just look at partners to do it, where you dont know what the timelines are, etc.

Unquestionably, Lyft has a lot of catching up to do

Unquestionably, Lyft has a lot of catching up to do. Google (now Waymo) has operated self-driving cars for over seven years, racking up hundreds of thousands of miles on public roads and millions more in simulation. Ubers self-driving cars have been on the streets in Pittsburgh since summer 2016, and now has vehicles in California and Arizona, too. The major OEMs like GM, Ford, Volvo, and others all have test vehicles on the roads. Lyft clearly saw its competitors moving rapidly forward and decided it didnt want to get left in the lurch.

What this means for Lyfts various partnerships is more up in the air. The companys executives said they were confident they could develop their own self-driving cars without jeopardizing any of their relationships, but it seems doubtful that all of these partnerships will survive as the competition surrounding autonomous driving heats up.

We reached out to GM, Waymo, NuTonomy, and Jaguar for their reaction to Lyfts news. Waymo and Jaguar did not immediately respond, while GM said it will look into the matter and get back. Karl Iagnemma, CEO of NuTonomy, sent us a statement that said, for now, cooperation was key if self-driving cars were to reach a critical mass on the roads.

The AV ecosystem is constantly evolving and no single winner will be crowned, Iagnemma said. Partnerships remain critical to nuTonomy's success, and our aim is to work with groups with whom we share strategic aims and core values. These are partners that are transparent, innovative, and are focused on putting autonomous fleets on the road. We're excited about the work we're doing with Lyft, and remain focused on executing on our aspect of the partnership.

Link:

Lyft is now building its own self-driving technology, which is a big deal - The Verge

Earlier this month, the Nashville District Attorney completely retired charges against a man named Christopher Miller who was arrested in May by the citys police for attempting to sell the botanical substance called kratom.

The move brought renewed attention to this naturally occurring product that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) last year proposed classifying as an illegal Schedule I substance a plan which the DEA uncharacteristically withdrew, following a public comment period characterized by opposition from a wide range of constituents.

In a previous blog post about competing interests in the e-cigarette market, I described the so-called Bootlegger and Baptist theory of regulation, a realpolitik analysis of perhaps the single most effective type of issue-driven coalitions.

The common purpose of these two disconnected groups with profoundly divergent motivations who nonetheless shared the same goal, led to the prohibition of alcohol in 1920.

It was arguably the governments appetite for lost revenue from taxes on the sale of booze which eventually fueled a successful constitutional amendment in 1933, overturning what the Bootlegger-Baptist coalition had achieved thirteen years earlier.

With current annual opioid sales of around $11 billion in the U.S., projected to grow to $18 billion by 2021, an epidemic of addictions plagues nearly every demographic group in the country.

The fact that kratom helps many hooked individuals kick the dangerous habit, according to various experts and observers, means it has potentially significant economic impacts for pharmaceutical companies selling opioid painkillers.

Given the major addiction epidemic, clearly not all customers for the pharmaceutical companies products are consuming them for legitimate medical reasons.

On the issue of whether kratom should be criminalized, viewed one way opioid pharmaceutical makers approximate the Bootlegger part of the equation, without implying any nefarious intent or negligence.

Ostensibly, these companies would profit or continue to profit, rather from the DEA making kratom a Schedule I substance, since it purportedly functions as a reverse gateway drug, helping opioid addicts beat their habits.

During the public notice and comment process for the DEAs plan to criminalize kratom, no vocal grassroots constituency emerged in support of the rule no Baptist to match whatever economic interests (Bootleggers) may have favored the plan.

According to Regendus data, an analytics solution that applies Natural Language Processing to rapidly analyze sentiment contained in public comments, the vast majority of more than 24,000 submissions were strongly opposed to the DEAs plan.

As a former federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, I was personally familiar with the DEA, whose policies and agents I regularly encountered on one side of a courtroom or the other.

On the defense side in particular, the courtroom is where the DEA normally faces opposition to its policies from certain elements of the public, i.e. the accused.

In the war on drugs, the agencys rules have major, life-changing impacts on individuals, their families and communities.

Many observers of the DEAs proposal to outlaw kratom and the agencys eventual withdrawal in the face of strong public opposition on the issue have noted the rarity of the outcome.

In this case, the public leveraged its legal right to comment and influence a rule-making process, to stop a rule in its tracks before their government acted to make them defendants or criminals.

Instead of a loss in the courtroom, anti-kratom interests inside and outside the DEA lost their case in the rule-making process.

John W. Davis II is founder and CEO of N&C Inc., a provider of solutions such as Regendus that help advocates analyze complex content, discover insights, and better represent the interests of clients and stakeholders.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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How technology can help government fight the war on drugs - The Hill (blog)

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Approximately 23 million Americans have had at least one package stolen from their home. Home surveillance cameras have recorded such thefts in broad daylight.

Pre-order Jeff Rossen's new book, "Rossen to the Rescue" here

But now some police departments are harnessing new technology to beat these "porch pirates" at their own game. "We're putting bait packages out there and catching the guys who are stealing these packages," said Capt. Gary Berg of the Campbell Police Department in Campbell, California.

TODAY national investigative correspondent Jeff Rossen demonstrated the technology by taking a bait package off a doorstep where it had been planted by Campbell police. He didn't tell them where he was going to drive after taking it.

But thanks to the GPS tracking device the package contained, Rossen didn't have to. Despite taking a circuitous route to a remote park, he was confronted by cops within moments of stopping his car. If Rossen had been a real thief, "you'd be in handcuffs right now," Berg told him.

Other police departments are also starting to use this technology. In the meantime, a good way to avoid becoming a victim of porch pirates is to have packages delivered to your workplace if you can, or to set up delivery for a time you'll be at home.

To suggest a topic for an upcoming investigation, visit the Rossen Reports Facebook page.

The rest is here:

Cops use technology to catch package-stealing 'porch pirates' - Today.com

Even as the Nasdaq Composite is reaching fresh all-time highs, Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) stock's 138% rally over the past 12 months puts the Nasdaq's 25% rise to shame. These numbers certainly don't lie, but they also only tell part of the story when it comes to Micron.

Take a step further back to view the bigger picture, and one sees a company that has experienced both sweeping successes and stinging failures over the years, a point investors enamored by its recent rally must keep in mind. To get a better sense of the company and the forces that drive it, let's examine three charts that sum up Micron Technology and its long-term share price dynamics.

Image Source: Micron Technology

Perhaps the most important thing to understand when looking at Micron is that the DRAM and flash memory chips it sells are effectively commodity products. Market spot prices control what they can charge, which means that Micron's revenue is almost entirely dependent on the current supply-and-demand dynamic for both types of memory chips.

This can lead to the same sort of tremendous top-line fluctuations that are experienced by oil producers or other commodity-based businesses, as you can see from Micron's historical revenue chart.

MU Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts

As you can see, the general direction of Micron's sales has been upward, as technology and computing power have become more integral parts of our everyday lives in recent years.

However, since the year 2000, the company's revenue has experienced four major contractions that, predictably, led to steep losses for Micron shareholders (more on that below). Before turning to its stock price though, we need to look at the rest of Micron's cost structure, which plays an important role in a broader discussion of the giant chipmaker.

As is the case for most companies that lack pricing power, Micron Technology's margin structure shows a tremendous amount of variability. When times are good, the company can produce significant profits. However, when memory chip prices soften -- either due to economic weakness or market-wide supply-and-demand imbalances -- its profits can nosedive deep into the red as the following charts demonstrate.

MU Gross Profit Margin (TTM) data by YCharts

It's also important to note that Micron's cost structure differs from that ofchipmakers like Qualcomm in that it owns and operates its own semiconductor manufacturing plants. This means Micron's cost structure is more rigid than that of firms that outsource their chip fabrication.

The added fixed costs that come with this strategy make Micron's bottom line more sensitive to revenue changes. Big picture, it's important to note that Micron's lack of pricing power (gross margins) and its more rigid cost structure (net margins) go a long way toward explaining the company's highly cyclical stock price.

Because of the above factors, it should come as no surprise that Micron's stock has also swung wildly over the years. Take a look at the company's historical performance against its benchmark, the Nasdaq Composite.

MU data by YCharts

This nicely captures my cautious take on Micron, particularly for long-term buy-and-hold investors. Micron can generate market-beating returns when investors buy its shares during a pricing rut and hold them until memory prices recover, which is exactly the scenario that has played out with Micron over the past year or so.

Unfortunately, shareholders who have mistimed their investments -- we don't believe in trying to time the market here at The Fool -- have lost their shirts. To be sure, times are flush at Micron right now, and the continued recovery in its business has Wall Street analysts as bullish as ever. However, the company's highly cyclical nature and lack of meaningful pricing power suggest this same scenario will eventually take place.

Ultimately, this isn't an attempt to dissuade investors from buying Micron stock. Rather, it's an earnest warning that owning Micron shares comes with legitimate risks that need to be fully understood prior to investing.

Andrew Tonner owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of Qualcomm. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Originally posted here:

Micron Technology Inc. in 3 Charts - Motley Fool