This content was sent on june, 26th via our Tech Watch Newsletter

We’re still in June but entire Europe, except Portugal, is under big heat waves right now 🥵There’s nothing you can do but embrace it so, sit back, relax, and enjoy this issue.

In this edition, we’ll talk about #blockchain, Boston Dynamics #robots, #deepfakes, USA custom border leaking faces and licence plate, the new sign in with Apple, but also #opensource solutions for using your Google Spreadsheet as database with simple JSON API, and warp up with #AI generated clothes and new assistive tech that let you drive a Tesla at 286km/h in a narrow tunnel.

This is Smile’s Innovation Watch.

Innovation •/ˌɪnəˈveɪʃən/

Gartner says 90% of blockchain project will need replacing in 18 months

TL;DR; Obsolescence is a real thing. Blockchain technologies are very young and few are mature enough to go in production. Some may say none of them. Even if we see a lot of PoC out in the real world, few businesses are going to base their entire business on such tech. And they are probably right. The tech is evolving so fast that it will require a lot of money and time to follow the evolution.

Boston Dynamics will sell their Spot dog-like robot this year

While parody video about how Boston Dynamics is training their robot is buzzing on the internet (with #teamlitteral thinking all of this are real and a real robot is using a gun against humans 🙄), Boston Dynamics is showing they’re ready to sell a product. But don’t dream (or have a nightmare) too much yet. Those robots require most of the time an agent to remote control them, can move autonomously in an environment but only if already mapped and will not decide by themselves where to go or not.

Replacing words on a video sequence is now possible, thanks to M.L.

Deepfakes. That’s the new buzzword. You should already know the fake-news, those pseudo press article that is really time-consuming to debunk but easy to write to spread false information and made people fear for something that doesn’t exist or spread lies. But here, are the next level of fake news. Real video interview where some words or entire sentences are replaced by a generated one. Mouth and voice accurate.

Privacy •/ˈpɹaɪ. və. si/

The USA custom border agency leaked personal data of travellers

The Custom & Border Protection agency heard about a leak of approx. 100 000 pictures of travellers and license plate collected throw their automated or semi-automated system. Due to an unauthorized transfer of a subcontractor’s subcontractor. Regarding the picture, it’s not clear if it’s the booth at the airport or the brand new facial recognition of all people arriving by boat. A CBP representative states “The best way to avoid breaches of sensitive personal data is not to collect and retain such data in the first place” … You don’t say 😆

Apple cares about its user private data

Or at least, the trend on the market gives them the opportunity to lock their user a little bit more in their ecosystem. Apple is going after the “Connect with” [Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, WhatsApp, Amazon, Snapchat, Telegram, Slack, …] feature and enforce that all the apps which are using this, will include also a connect with Apple button, which will add extra layer of protection by doing forwarding on your personal data like your email. Basically, the app will get an odf3sldq2@privaterelay.appleid.com email instead of yours, and when you revoke the access, the forwarding is destroyed.

Openness • /ˈəʊ.pən/+/nəs/

SteinHQ

We showed you some tools on our previous issues which allow you to use a Google spreadsheet as storage and have a JSON API endpoint to get/set data. But none of those solutions allows you to run the code on your own premises and check that the code isn’t doing something shady like accessing your data and send them to China gov. Well, that’s now the case.

Fun • /fʌn/

This clothing line was designed by A.I.

It’s called “Glitch” and you’ll totally understand why when you’re looking at the pictures 😆. Two MIT graduates applied machine learning to generate design which is then sent to real designers who brings it to life. A few designs are available for purchase, like their little black dress rework, and 50% of the profit goes to a non-profit supporting woman in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

Tesla Model 3 at 286km/h in a very small tunnel

The Boring Company, one of the many Musk company, is now demonstrating to journalist their latest iteration of their tunnel with integration into the Tesla software. This update let the car travel super fast with driver assistive technology without trailing wheels (which are the first iteration of how to stay in track). For your record, the Boring Company cut the cost of a section of a tunnel from $1 billion to $10 million.