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Hello All

As always loads of great news and links in this week’s UXD Inspired Read list. The Amazon purchase of Whole Foods is still reverberating within the tech and retail spaces, and what long term effects may come from this type of deal. In Aviation, we watched as weather patterns downed flights in Phoenix due to heat. A great Wired post explains the science behind why. Steven Hawking has some accelerated predictions, but the takeaway here is that we need to fund further space exploration irrespective of Climate Change. More links on Privacy, Google, Cyberattacks, Net Neutrality, Startup Entrepreneurs, and new products like VRB and Twist. After all of these heavy articles, watching Japanese furniture maker Ishitani create a stunning, hand-built table maybe a fitting dose of design inspiration.

Have a great weekend.

M

1. Amazon And Cashiers, Goldman Sachs Robots And More On The Future Of Work
“Why you should care: Roughly a quarter of US employees work remotely all or some of the time, and that stat is on the rise.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazon-cashiers-goldman-sachs-robots-more-future-work-fairchild

2. Amazon’s Move Signals End Of Line For Many Cashiers
“Imagine this scene from the future: You walk into a store and are greeted by name, by a computer with facial recognition that directs you to the items you need. You peruse a small area — no chance of getting lost or wasting time searching for things — because the store stocks only sample items. You wave your phone in front of anything you want to buy, then walk out. In the back, robots retrieve your items from a warehouse and deliver them to your home via driverless car or drone.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/upshot/amazons-move-signals-end-of-line-for-many-cashiers.html

3. Cashiers’ Last Stand
“Technology threatens their roles. So why are so many convinced their jobs are safe and that Silicon Valley has it wrong?”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cashiers-last-stand-chip-cutter

4. Why Phoenix’s Airplanes Can’t Take Off In Extreme Heat
“Before you can understand how it can be too hot to fly, you have to understand how airplanes fly. Everyone likes to give a simple answer, like “It’s all about lift.” Yes, that is true, but it’s not terribly convincing. To really get at the physics involved here, you need to look at the momentum principle. The momentum principle says that the total force on an object is equal to the rate of change of momentum, where momentum is mass times velocity.”
https://www.wired.com/story/phoenix-flights-canceled-heat/

5. Stephen Hawking: “I Am Convinced That Humans Need To Leave Earth”
“Speaking at the Starmus Festival in Trondheim, Norway on Tuesday, Hawking reiterated his point: “If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before,” he explained, according to the BBC.”
https://www.sciencealert.com/stephen-hawking-i-am-convinced-that-humans-need-to-leave-earth/page-2

6. Google Will Stop Scanning Your Emails To Show Personalized Ads In Gmail
“Google today announced that it will stop scanning the emails of its free Gmail users for the purpose of delivering personalized ads later this year. If you’ve recently received a lot of emails about photography or cameras, for example, currently Google may show you a deal from a local camera store that it thinks might be interesting to you. On the other hand, if you’ve reported those emails as spam, then Google would take steps not to show those ads.”
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/23/google-will-stop-scanning-gmail/

7. Swift Creator Departs Tesla After Just Six Months
“Chris Lattner has built a solid reputation after working for 11 years at Apple on low-level software technologies. In particular, he developed Apple’s most recent programming language, Swift. In January, Tesla announced that it had recruited Lattner as VP of Autopilot Software. Six months later, he announced on Twitter that he was leaving the car company. “Turns out that Tesla isn’t a good fit for me after all,” he said. Lattner doesn’t have a new job in mind just yet.”
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/21/swift-creator-departs-tesla-after-just-six-months/

8. Samsung Quietly Acquired VR App Studio VRB
“Samsung has been bullish on virtual reality hardware, hoping that its early moves in headsets and devices to shoot content will give it a stronger position in the space as (and if!) it continues to expand to more applications and users. Now TechCrunch has learned that as part of that effort, it’s also made an acquisition. Samsung quietly bought a New York-based startup called VRB, which has developed several apps to capture and view 360-degree content.”
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/16/samsung-quietly-acquired-vr-app-studio-vrb-sources-say-for-5-5m/

9. Trump Plans To Dismantle Obama-Era “Startup Visa”
“Obama rule gave residence to foreigners who lined up $250,000 in capital.”
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/trump-plans-to-dismantle-obama-era-startup-visa/

10. A Cyberattack ‘The World Isn’t Ready For’
“On April 29, someone hit his employer, IDT Corporation, with two cyberweapons that had been stolen from the National Security Agency. Mr. Ben-Oni, the global chief information officer at IDT, was able to fend them off, but the attack left him distraught. In 22 years of dealing with hackers of every sort, he had never seen anything like it. Who was behind it? How did they evade all of his defenses? How many others had been attacked but did not know it? ”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/technology/ransomware-attack-nsa-cyberweapons.html

11. Why Net Neutrality Matters Even In The Age Of Oligopoly
“Under the current net neutrality rules, broadband providers like Comcast and Charter, and wireless providers like AT&T and Verizon, can’t block or slow down your access to lawful content, nor can they create so-called “fast lanes” for content providers who are willing to pay extra. In other words, your internet provider can’t slow your Amazon Prime Video stream to a crawl so you’ll keep your Comcast cable plan, and your mobile carrier can’t stop you from using Microsoft’s Skype instead of your own Verizon cell phone minutes. ”
https://www.wired.com/story/why-net-neutrality-matters-even-in-the-age-of-oligopoly/

12. Twist Is Slack Without The Annoying Distractions
“When Slack implemented threaded conversations, it seemed like the holy grail for internal communications. Slack finally lets you talk about multiple things in separate conversations. But Slack remains a real-time messaging service at heart, so threads don’t feel native. It works well for many teams, but some companies would prefer something a bit more asynchronous and focused. At the same time, it should be more interactive than emails. That’s why Twist is starting over from scratch and taking a different approach by focusing on threads and borrowing some of Slack’s best ideas.”
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/21/twist-is-slack-without-the-annoying-distractions/

13. Ishitani Furniture – Making A Kigumi Table
Ishitani is an excellent furniture designer who showcases his entire process. His videos are very well done, inspiring, and somewhat relaxing to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x51zMg7roIs