Monthly Archives: February 2021

Although it doesn't have an estimate for automotive-related cloud spending, IT researcher Canalys estimates the overall global cloud infrastructure market will increase at about 16 percent a year on average, rising to reach roughly $300 billion by 2025.

While services are similar, there are some differences between providers.

"Whereas AWS was first to market, giving it time to build out its capabilities, Google was more of a laggard and had to focus more on specific verticals such as banking," said Matthew Ball, Canalys' chief analyst, about the overall cloud infrastructure market.

While Google Cloud is smaller than its two main rivals, Wee said the business has been growing at a faster rate -- about 50 percent -- in part because of its competitive advantage in semiconductors designed specifically for AI.

Known as tensor processing units, or TPUs, these proprietary chips, which are not for sale, can be trained with visual data to spot blemishes on a car's paint job or defects in a powertrain component using visual clues. (AWS in November began utilizing A100 chips that feature tensor cores for similar applications, but these are graphics processors sold by Nvidia.)

"The reason we have that is because we are probably one of the biggest consumers of machine learning on the planet. Every time you type something into Google, you have just used our algorithms," Wee said.

With the help of AI, Google believes it can improve an automaker's efficiency at a double-digit rate. In the case of Renault this is done by aggregating data from more than 2,500 machines deployed across 22 production sites worldwide.

Just like with Android, Google Cloud believes its commitment to support other open-source software such as Kubernetes and TensorFlow is a key selling point. This enables a customer to more easily switch providers or add new ones, reducing the risk of being locked in with any one particular vendor.

"This was a huge factor for Renault," Wee said. "One of the reasons they went with us was the security that if at any point in time they wanted to move providers, they were at liberty to do so."

Read more:

How Amazon, Google, other hyperscalers are transforming the auto industry - Automotive News Europe

By most measures, Dom Leca is a successful entrepreneur. Hes started and sold two companies, including one to Google. And yet instead of feeling accomplished, several years ago Leca realised he felt an internal void.

Has anything hes built really improved peoples lives?

The journey he took to ponder this question led him to an improbable destination: designing a new browser called Beam. The Beam browser combines web browsing with note-taking functions to allow users to build their own knowledge databases.

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Entering a field dominated by Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla might seem like a fools errand. Leca knows its risky. But his underlying logic was enough to convince a group of VCs who just handed him $9.5m to pursue his goals.

The investors include Pace Capital, a new emerging fund led by Chris Paik and Jordan Cooper in New York, plus notable angel investors such as Christan Reber (Pitch, Wunderlist), Harry Stebbings (20minVC), and Albert Wenger (USV). This follows a $3m round Leca raised last October from Spark Capital (Twitter, Tumblr) and Alven Capital.

To hear Leca describe it, the development of Beam is as much an effort to improve the web browsing experience as it is a spiritual quest for meaning. Beams debut later this year may help gauge how successful he is in reconciling those two impulses.

The only reason Im doing this is to be working for the greater good, Leca said. Is this something I can explain to my kid and be proud of the fact that its not just a stupid business to make money?

Back in 2008, Leca founded Visuamobile, a mobile app development startup that Insign had acquired. Leca eventually left to create Sparrow Mail which developed an email app for Mac and iOS that generated some strong buzz. Just two years later it was sold to Google. In a blog post at the time, Leca wrote: Now were joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision one that we think we can better achieve with Google.

Leca stuck with Google until 2015 when he jumped ship to join Stuart, a last-mile delivery company that used a fleet of bicycle couriers to deliver products on-demand. It was at this point that something began gnawing at Leca.

I felt the bulk of tech I was working on was detrimental to society.

I felt the bulk of tech I was working on was detrimental to society, he said. I wasnt very happy about having 150 guys waiting in the staircase of the company to get a $15 an hour job. I felt myself going the wrong way. So I quit. (La Poste later acquired Stuart in 2017.)

Leca immersed himself in design jobs while he tried to take a deeper look at the meaning of tech and society. He eventually came across a 1973 book by Ivan Illich, a priest and philosopher, called Tools for Convivality. The book laid out a vision for the relationship with tools and how they affect ones perspective on the world. As Leca explains it, a tool is convivial if it fosters autonomy, improves efficiency within the bounds of human aptitudes and organic pace, is easy to master, and broadens your personal horizons.

At the same time, he became a fan of the note-taking app Roam. He loved the organising and collaborative functions but he also felt limited. He was always going back and forth between his web browser and Roam: a fundamental flaw he believed he could fix.

Youre watching a video, youve got an idea, and then youve got to do the old dance, he said. Ive got an idea and then I need to include it in my notes app. Then you navigate to it, you put it there, and then you come back to your content. You can do this two or three times a day. But if you do this 20 times, its completely breaking your mental flow.

Leca decided to focus on this problem.

I think these note-taking apps fail because they actually live in the wrong place, Leca said. It should be in the browser and it shouldnt be outside, because they shouldnt be thought of as an abstraction outside of yourself.

And so he started Beam.

This new web browser is still under development. But Leca gave a demo as he walked through the basic functions and described the underlying philosophy.

When it comes to browsing, Leca said he devotes all this time online doing searches and visiting websites and then forgetting most of the information he had gleaned. What do I have for all these hours I spent on the internet? he said. Nothing. Ive got three bookmarks and a few notes here and everything else is basically lost.

Beam aims to classify the bits of knowledge you gain as you jump from website to website.

Beam aims to fix that by generating notes as one visits websites. These notes are stored in cards that would classify the bits of knowledge you gain as you jump from website to website and open 40 tabs on the browser.

The search box on Beam scans both the web as well as the users personal knowledge database of cards. It also tracks how long someone spends on a website as a measure of how useful the information is likely to be, and then can match that to an existing card to store relevant information, or create a new card to begin building information around a new topic.

So if I type in James Dean, I would get the canonical stuff like the access to the Wikipedia page, Leca said. But in this case, because James Dean doesnt exist yet in my knowledge base, I can also just create the card. And so if in two years Im searching on this again, I could navigate to my knowledge base.

People will be able to share links to the cards with friends or on social media. But eventually, he hopes to enable people to put them online so they are searchable by others who may share the same interests and would benefit from a curated knowledge database.

At some point, you can expect that not only are you going to have your own knowledge base results plus the web, but were also going to feed you the relevant results from third parties, he said.

Its basically a cultural search engine.

So if Im into guitar making and a Japanese guy has an 80% overlap of links on guitar making, its highly probable that Im going to enjoy looking at what hes done and enjoy navigating into his knowledge base. This is still very far away, but its basically a cultural search engine.

At the moment, Leca is hoping to have an internal alpha version by April and a closed beta opening in early September. The latest fundraising will allow him to continue hiring. He plans to grow his seven-person team to 15 over the next couple of months as he hunts for machine learning and front-end web specialists.

Leca is realistic about the prospects for Beam. Hes not expecting to dethrone Google Chrome or Mozillas Firefox. Instead, hes betting that Beam can create a group of passionate users which he can then use to strike a deal with Google or another search company to be the default search engine for Beams browser. (Much like Google pays a hefty sum to be the default for Apples Safari.)

Im hopeful because Beam will be viral to some extent when you start sharing cards, Leca said. If we grab a few percentage points of the browser market, then maybe we can be paid by Google. Thats a long shot, but thats the thing Im hoping for.

More:

Reinventing the browser? Beam raises capital to take on Google - Sifted

OTTAWA - Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault is promising legislation this year to ensure tech giants like Google and Facebook pay for the news content they disseminate on their platforms.

The promise comes as newspapers across the country are displaying blank front pages in a bid to highlight the urgent need for news media companies to be paid for their work.

News Media Canada, which represents newspaper publishers, organized the campaign; it saw some 105 daily and community newspapers across the country displaying blank front pages Thursday, with more to follow Friday.

The organization argues that Canadian news media companies are going under and journalism jobs are disappearing because their content is being used for free by Google and Facebook, which are simultaneously hoovering up 80 per cent of all digital advertising revenue.

It warns that as the producers of real news disappear, hate and fake news will be all that's left.

In a statement, Guilbeault says his department is studying options for a made-in-Canada formula for ensuring publishers are fairly compensated for the news they produce; his goal is to introduce legislation on the matter this year.

News is not free and has never been, he said in the statement Thursday.

Our position is clear: publishers must be adequately compensated for their work and we will support them as they deliver essential information for the benefit of our democracy and the health and well-being of our communities.

While the tech giants have played a positive role in making news accessible, Guilbeault said, we must address the market imbalance between news media organizations and those who benefit from their work.

He added that the government is looking closely at how other countries are handling the issue, specifically France and Australia.

As far as News Media Canada is concerned, Australia has found the right solution: mandatory arbitration if digital companies fail to reach an agreement with news publishers on how much they should be paid.

These massive American companies get virtually all of the revenue and don't pay for content, says the organization's president, John Hinds, in an open letter to members of Parliament.

Movie content doesn't work that way in Canada. Music content doesn't work that way. TV show content doesn't work that way. So why is news content treated differently?

Google and Facebook have threatened to shut down their services in Australia if the mandatory arbitration policy is implemented. However, Guilbeault has suggested such boycotts will become untenable as more countries follow Australia's lead.

The minister is expected sometime this winter to introduce legislation to regulate the dissemination of hate speech, child pornography, non-consensual sexual images, terrorism and incitements to violence on social media.

His office says legislation dealing with fair compensation for news content will be introduced separately.

Facebook funds a fellowship that supports journalism positions at The Canadian Press.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 4, 2021.

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Legislation coming this year to force Google, Facebook to pay for news content - CP24 Toronto's Breaking News

Marlborough medical device company Hologic will soon integrate Google Clouds machine learning technologies into its Genius Digital Diagnostics system, which helps doctors screen for cervical cancer, Hologic announced on Monday.

The multi-year partnership is expected to increase actionable insights from cytology slides, for cytotechnologists and pathologists, according to a press release from Hologic. Google Cloud is expected to provide secure data architecture to further enhance what the Hologic system is capable of doing.

Through this collaboration with Hologic, we are helping to evolve digital diagnostics by complementing their expertise in diagnostics and AI with our expertise in machine learning, said Joe Miles, managing director of Google Cloud Healthcare and Life Sciences, in a statement.

Genius Digital Diagnostics is currently CE-marked for European use, but is not available in the United States.

Financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.

Read more here:

Hologic teams up with Google Cloud to enhance cervical cancer detection - Worcester Business Journal

Affordable 5G phones are fast becoming a crowded market.

At $499 the realme 7 5G is a full $100 cheaper than Google's Pixel 4A with 5G and comes with two extra cameras to boot; but not all cameras are created equally.

The realme 7 5G ticks a lot of boxes which many of the industry's most expensive phones have slowly stripped away.

You can expand the phone's 128GB storage with a micro SD card, a USB-C wall adapter comes in the box (here's looking at you, Apple and Samsung) and there's space for a second sim card to "separate work from play" for those sick of carrying around separate work and personal phones.

By design, the realme 7 5G is nearly identical to Google's Pixel 4A with 5G.

Realme has combined a responsive fingerprint reader and on/off button on the right hand side of the phone (which I now personally prefer) and keeps its camera "bump" to a minimum.

The phone still rocks slightly while lying flat on the table, but it's nowhere near as cumbersome as the bump on the back of the new iPhone and Samsung models.

The 6.5" screen mimics the hole-punch selfie cam placement on the Google Pixel too, which rarely to never obstructs your view while watching videos.

The screen doesn't get quite as bright as the standard iPhone 12 to my eye, but I never had any problem reading the screen in full sunlight with the brightness cranked up.

It may not be as crisp as the competition's best AMOLED displays but realme's LCD holds its own for $499.

The realme's 120Hz at that price tag is wildly impressive and makes for an incredibly smooth experience.

Gamers will love those numbers too, and should have few problems with the Dimensity 800U chip powering the device.

Overall the device feels snappy and quickly reminded me why I love Android after a few months using the new iPhones.

Problem is, the latest update, Android 11 isn't available onrealme 7 5G with no word on when it could arrive.

That means it's missing features like an in-built screen recorder and my favourite Google-exclusive app, Recorder - which automatically transcribes audio without needing an internet connection.

Out of the box, the realme 7 5G's battery doesn't disappoint.

Its 5000 mAh's easily got me through full work days taking calls, hotspotting to my laptop while downloading and uploading videos.

Using the "dart" charger that comes in the box should get a flat realme 7 5G to around 60 per cent in 30 minutes according to realme, which was accurate in my testing.

Finally, the cameras. There are five on the realme 7 5G: a 48MP standard lens, an 8MP ultra-wide lens, a macro lens for extreme close-ups, 2MP black-and-white portrait lens and 16MP selfie camera.

We're fast learning that not all pixels are created equal. Apple and Google work wonders with 12MP cameras thanks purely to the power of their camera software and, with the exception of Samsung, the focus of the big name companies has been on improving AI and stability, rather than megapixels for years now.

Realme has stuffed a lot of lenses into the 7 5G, but in practice, its camera doesn't focus as quickly, pick up as much detail or accurately capture colours as well as you may expect in 2021.

Compare these three images inside Victoria's parliament taken with an iPhone 12 Mini and the realme 7 5G.

At full digital zoom, you can clearly easily make out the numbers on the clock on the iPhone 12 shot, but not on the one shot on the realme 7 5G.

The field of view is greater on the iPhone 12's ultra-wide but I would argue that the realme's bolder contrast (and possibly macro camera) make the close up of the balustrade more striking, despite the extreme background blur.

Now compare these two portrait shots. Against a bright background, the realme 7 5G doesn't take a natural looking shot.

The puppy's fur appears to be a much darker, rusty red rather and loses plenty of detail in that darkness.

All phones struggle in low light, but I was hopeful night-time video would hold up on the realme 7 5G thanks to its new astrophotography setting.

Alas, it's almost impossible to see what's happening on this video of a darkened Melbourne airport which was captured in much more detail and with much fewer artifacts on the same iPhone 12 Mini.

Again, the iPhone 12 Mini is more than double the price of the realme 7 5G and as such, one-to-one comparisons aren't exactly fair.

Ultimately, realme has delivered an impressive phone for the price.

The 5G speeds were expectedly quick and the connection was strong across much of Melbourne's CBD.

The 5G didn't drain the battery as heavily as I expected and for anyone looking for a cheaper way to buy into the next generation network, the realme 7 5G is a compelling option for the price.

Realme 7 5G is available from February 11, 2021 in Australia.

Realme supplied an early model of the phone to 9News for the purpose of this review.

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What the latest 5G android phone realme 7 has to offer - 9News