Waymo vs. Uber gets more serious, Trump takes action on cybersecurity and Google uses neural networks to create custom face stickers. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for May 12, 2017. Also, Darrell Etherington should be back next week! 1. Waymo's claims of trade secret theft could result in criminal case Waymo sued Uber earlier this year, claiming that its former employee stole 14,000 documents containing trade secrets about its self-driving car project and took them to Uber. Now the judge in the civil case has referred the theft claims to the U.S. Attorney for a possible criminal investigation. This doesn't mean the U.S. Attorney's Office will definitely open an investigation. It just opens up the possibility. But Uber probably isn't happy about the news. [caption id="attachment_1473919" align="aligncenter" width="680"] (Photo: ANGELO MERENDINO/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption] 2. Trump signs long-delayed executive order on cybersecurity Trump was initially set to sign the order shortly after his inauguration in January and held a press conference on the issue, but ultimately delayed. The order signed yesterday contains some notable changes: For instance, the order puts responsibility for cybersecurity risk on the heads of federal agencies. 3. Improbable grabs $502M led by Softbank at a $1B+ valuation for its virtual world Spatial OS Improbable made its name with a platform called SpatialOS. Launched last year, it lets developers design and build massively detailed environments by using distributed cloud computing infrastructure. 4. Google's neural network-generated custom face stickers are like Bitmoji that aren't horrible Chalk one up for the robots. Google's system, which has no name, uses a selfie to figure out your basic look: hair, eye color, skin tone, face shape, headgear, etc. It then builds a face out of pieces drawn by "resident artist" Lamar Abram. 5. Apple's Watch can detect an abnormal heart rhythm with 97% accuracy, UCSF study says This is just a study built on a preliminary algorithm, but it holds promise in trying to identify and prevent stroke in the future. (Atrial fibrillation, the most common abnormal heart rhythm, causes 1 in 4 strokes.) In the future, adding to wearable devices algorithms trained to identify heart problems could help save lives. 6. A day on the track with the ridiculous 2017 Ford GT supercar A few weeks back, Ford invited us out to Salt Lake City to spend an afternoon in the 2017 Ford GT supercar. This is the modern update of the car that Henry Ford built to defeat Ferrari at the 24-hour race at Le Mans. The company is only making 250 of these things per year, and they'll go for around $500,000 each. |
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