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Is nVidia’s Auto Venture Paying Off?
August 17, 2016 by admin
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The driverless car market is expected to grow to $42 billion by 2025 and Nvidia has a cunning plan to grab as much of that market as possible with its current automotive partnerships.
The company started to take in more cash from its car business recently. The company earned $113 million from its automotive segment in fiscal Q1 2017. While that is not much it represents a 47 percent increase over the year before. Automotive revenue up to about 8.6 percent of total revenue and it is set to get higher.
BMW, Tesla, Honda and Volkswagen are all using Nvidia gear in one way or another.
BMW’s been using Nvidia infotainment systems for years and seems to have been Nvidia’s way into the industry. Tesla has a 17 inch touchscreen display of which is powered by Nvidia. You can see Tesla’s all-digital 12.3-inch instrument cluster display uses Nvidia GPUs. Honda has Tegra processors for its Honda Connect infotainment system.
But rumors are that Nvidia is hoping to make a killing from the move to driverless cars. The company is already on the second version of its Drive PX self-driving platform. Nvidia claims that Drive PX recently learned how to navigate 3,000 miles of road in just 72 hours.
BMW, Ford, and Daimler are testing Drive PX and Audi used Nvidia’s GPUs to help pilot some of its self-driving vehicles in the past. In fact Audi has claimed that it can be used to help normal car driving.
It said that the deep learning capabilities of Drive PX allowed its vehicles to learn certain self-driving capabilities in four hours instead of the two years that it took on competing systems.
According to Automotive News Europe Nvidia is working closely with Audi as its primary brand for Drive PX but then it will move to Volkswagen, Seat, Skoda, Lamborghini, and Bentley.
Tesla also appears to think that Nvida is a key element for driverless car technology. At the 2015 GPU Technology Conference last year, the company said that Tegra GPU’s will prove “really important for self-driving in the future.” Tesla does not use the Drive PX system yet, but it could go that way.
Courtesy-Fud
Spotify Says ‘No’ To Sales Rumor
June 20, 2016 by admin
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Daniel Ek, co-founder of Swedish music streaming service Spotify which boasts the largest paid subscriber base in the world, said on Thursday he had no intention of selling the company.
While investors believe privately owned Spotify is probably heading for a public listing, some industry analysts see the loss-making company as a takeover target for a larger tech giant with deeper pockets.
“My selfish ambition with Spotify is just trying to show … that we can create one of those super companies here in Europe,” he told journalists at the symposium Brilliant Minds, which aims to bring artists and musicians together with the tech community.
Asked if that meant he was not up for selling the firm, Ek said: “I’m not going to sell, no.”
Spotify, founded in 2006, pays more than 80 percent of its revenue to record labels and artists and has not yet shown a profit as it spends to grow internationally. It competes in a business crowded with formidable rivals such as Apple Music, Google Music and YouTube.
Many other European tech start-ups have been swallowed up by bigger Silicon Valley competitors.
Ek said Silicon Valley got an earlier start in building up its tech giants but that Europe finally has the right conditions to support its own entrepreneurs.
“For the first time now there’s an ecosystem around it with capital and experience that can actually help guide entrepreneurs,” he said.
“The number one advice I tell everyone is ‘don’t sell’, because that’s the biggest problem we have. All these things could grow gigantic if you just kept the course and kept doing what you’re doing,” he added.
Last year Spotify made an operating loss of 184.5 million euros ($205 million), widening from 165.1 million in 2014.
Spotify, whose investors include Northzone, DST Global and Accel, does not disclose details about its ownership but the co-founders no longer own a majority, having sold off stakes.
Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/spotify-says-no-to-sales-rumor.html
Is Tesla Poaching nVidia’s Engineers?
April 20, 2016 by admin
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Tesla Motors,’ which has been poaching engineers from Apple and AMD, could be causing a few headaches for Nvidia.
MKM analyst Ian Ing pointed out that Nvidia and Tesla have partnered in machine-learning which is the key to autonomous driving. Nvidia’s own automotive segment grew 80 per cent to $320 million in revenue.
It had been known that Tesla is swiping Apple and AMD engineers, but the difficulty is that it also needs staff from its old chum Nvidia. Ing said that Apple and AMD staff are not as steeped in graphics processing units and machine learning as Nvidia’s staff.
“Although there are widely reportedly headlines that Tesla has been hiring chip architects from Apple and AMD, we note that expertise has been focused more on multi-purpose application processors vs. the GPU accelerators necessary for machine learning,” Ing wrote.
This could either pressure Nvidia to work more closely with Tesla, or it too might lose staff to the carmarker. However that might be a small headache for Nvidia which is doing obscenely well, according to Ing. He is suggesting everyone should buy Nvidia shares.
Courtesy-Fud
Microsoft, Google Cease Fire In Global Patent Deal
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Microsoft has been pursuing a more collaborative approach under CEO Satya Nadella, engaging longtime rivals like Salesforce, VMware and Apple. There hasn’t been much love between Microsoft and Google, but an announcement on Wednesday points towards an easing of those tensions.
Google and Microsoft have reached a broad agreement on patent matters, with a legal settlement ending some 20 lawsuits between the companies in the U.S. and Germany. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but the deal brings a laundry list of lawsuits to a close.
“Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues,” they said in a joint statement. “As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility.”
They also agreed to collaborate on patent matters and work together “to benefit our customers.”
The suits that have been settled include those related to mobile phones, video encoding and Wi-Fi technologies. That doesn’t mean Microsoft has given up its campaign to collect royalties from Android device makers for the mobile operating system’s alleged infringement of Microsoft patents.
It’s not clear from the statement what patent matters the companies will be working on together in the future, but changes have already begun. The two companies agreed earlier this month to work together (alongside other firms like Netflix and Mozilla) on a royalty-free video codec.
It remains to be seen if the settlement will lead to more work between Microsoft and Google in other areas. A major sticking point for consumers has been the lack of a Google-made YouTube app for smartphones and tablets running Windows.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/microsoft-google-cease-fire-in-global-patent-deal.html
Office 365 Goes Video Streaming
December 3, 2014 by admin
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Microsoft unveiled Office 365 Video, a YouTube-like streaming service where enterprises and large organizations can post in-house video content for communication and training.
“Office 365 Video provides organizations with a secure, company-wide destination for posting, sharing and discovering video content,” said Mark Kashman, a senior product manager with the Office 365 team, in a blog posting.
Kashman touted Video as a tool for internal communications, citing the examples of new-employee orientation, management messaging and worker training. Employees will also be able to contribute to a “Community” section, though most companies will probably frown on cat antic clips.
The service rolls out over the next few days to companies that have registered for Office 365′s First Release early distribution program, then through early 2015 to others.
Video will be available only to subscribers of Office 365′s plans for enterprises — E1 through E4 — and universities (A2 through A4). It will not be offered to consumer subscribers or firms with small business-oriented plans like Business Essentials, Business and Business Premium.
Kashman also said Office 365 plans for government agencies will get Video at some point, but he did not proffer a timeline.
The other requirement is SharePoint Online, an off-premises component of the enterprise and academic plans, but missing from the increasingly popular Office 365 ProPlus, the rent-not-buy plan used by organizations that have decided to retain their back-end services, like SharePoint and Exchange, on premises.
Although Office 365 Video has elements of consumer streaming services like Google’s YouTube, it’s strictly an in-house affair: It will be available only to employees, and then only those whom IT administrators have assigned access rights.
Will 3D Printing Take Off?
August 2, 2013 by admin
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The use of cheaper 3D printing is set to take off when a batch of patents expires in 2014.
Duann Scott, design evangelist at 3D printing company Shapeways said that in February 2014, key patents that currently prevent competition in the market for the most advanced and functional 3D printers will expire. The important patent is one which covers “laser sintering” which is the lowest-cost 3D printing technology. Because of its high resolution in all three dimensions, laser sintering can produce goods that can be sold as finished products.
At the moment it is only possible to buy expensive 3D laser sintering printers, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars each. But once the key patents on 3D printing via laser sintering expire, we could see huge drop in the price of these devices, says Scott.
Key patents expired on a more primitive form of 3D printing, known as fused deposition modelling resulted in an explosion of open-source FDM printers that eventually led to iconic home and hobbyist 3D printer manufacturer Makerbot. When the patents on FDM expired the cost of such printers fell as little as $300. Scott thinks that the same thing will happen with laser deposition 3D printers.
Anonymous Attacks MIT
January 23, 2013 by admin
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Anonymous goes after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) website after its president called for an internal investigation into what role it played in the prosecution of web activist Aaron Swartz.
MIT president Rafael Reif revealed the investigation in an email to staff that he sent out after hearing the news about Swartz’s death.
“I want to express very clearly that I and all of us at MIT are extremely saddened by the death of this promising young man who touched the lives of so many. It pains me to think that MIT played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy,” he wrote.
“I have asked Professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT’s involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it.”
Hacktivists from Anonymous defaced two MIT webpages in the wake of the announcement and turned them into memorials for Swartz.
AP Goes With Twitter
January 14, 2013 by admin
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The Associated Press began using its official Twitter account as an advertising platform on Monday, as the news organization looks for new ways to generate revenue.
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd was the first sponsor on the @ap account for breaking news, which is followed by 1.5 million Twitter users. The South Korean electronics maker’s initial “SPONSORED TWEET” promoted its events at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.
AP did not disclose financial details of the arrangement.
Twitter, which sells ads directly to make money from the social media’s monthly base of 200 million users, will not receive any proceeds from the AP-Samsung deal.
The AP called the initiative part of a new business strategy and stressed that sponsored tweets will clearly be labeled to differentiate them from news tweets.
The ads provide AP a new income source as news organizations from newspapers to television face severe revenue declines in the face of high production costs.
While the AP was founded in 1846 by U.S. newspapers as a breaking news conduit, only 22 percent of its revenue comes from member fees. Photo licensing, advertising on its news application AP Mobile and YouTube channel are other revenue streams.
Europe Investigating Google’s Privacy Policy
March 6, 2012 by admin
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France’s data protection watchdog is questioning the legality and fairness of Google’s new privacy policy, which it said breached European laws.
The CNIL regulator told Google in a letter dated February 27 it would lead a European-wide investigation of the web search giant’s latest policy and would send it questions by mid-March.
Google said in January it was simplifying its privacy policy, consolidating 60 guidelines into a single one that will apply for all its services, including YouTube, Gmail and its social network Google+.
The U.S. Internet company also said it will pool data it collects on individual users across its services, allowing it to better tailor search results and improve service.
Users cannot opt out of the new policy if they want to continue using Google’s services.
“The CNIL and EU data authorities are deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services: they have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing, and its compliance with European data protection legislation,” the French regulator wrote to Google.
Google plans to put the changes into effect March 1 and has rebuffed two requests from European regulators for a delay.
The tussle over data privacy comes at a delicate time for Google, whose business model is based on giving away free search, email, and other services while making money by selling user-targeted advertising.
It is already being investigated by the EU’s competition authority and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over how it ranks search results and whether it favors its own products over rival services.
The U.S. Is Falling Behind
February 16, 2012 by admin
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The U.S. government is losing a race in cyberspace — a social-networking race for the hearts and minds of the Internet community, a computer security expert said Wednesday.
Other countries — and many companies — are using social-networking tools to their advantage, while the U.S. government has taken tiny steps forward, said Rand Waltzman, a program manager focused on cybersecurity at the U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Chinese government pays citizens to patrol social-networking sites and dispute negative talk about all levels of government or any aspect of Chinese life, and companies such as Dell and Best Buy are training workers to respond to complaints on Facebook and other social-networking services, Waltzman said at the Suits and Spooks security conference in Arlington, Virginia.
U.S. regulations prevent the government from undertaking similar campaigns, he said. “Any time you want to go to the bathroom, you need presidential approval,” he said.
The U.S. will not be able to protect its residents if it cannot engage in its own covert social-media operations, Waltzman said.
Waltzman told about a U.S. special forces unit in Iraq in 2009 that attacked an insurgent paramilitary group, killed 16 of the members of the group and seized a “huge” weapons cache. As soon as the U.S. unit left the scene, the Iraqi group returned, put the bodies on prayer mats, and uploaded a photograph from a cheap mobile phone, he said. The group put out a press release in English and Arabic.